Watch out for the paint!

I was talking to a colleague the other day and they mentioned an attorney who is just gorgeous, looks like a Barbie doll, and they said she can cuss like a sailor, just hollers and cusses up and down the halls of their firm, and it’s just such a sad reflection on a beautiful girl.  That reminded me once again of what the Bible says in Luke 6:45: “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”  I think it is true that whatever is in us will come right out in times of trouble, pain or upset.  Seems the mouth always gives you away.

Tom and his sister Sally and I stole away to the beach house the day after Christmas for what was hopefully to be a little R&R and doing some repairs on the house.  Tom is an extremely hard worker, super intelligent, but mechanic work, so to speak, isn’t his forte exactly.  We had trip after trip to Lowe’s, to Wal-mart – couldn’t find a stud, so we had to get a stud finder, then the stud finder didn’t act right, beeped constantly, so he had to get in the attic but we didn’t have a ladder to access the attic hole, so off to Lowe’s – on and on it went.  In between, he added to the love bank by taking a walk with me every day on the beach, which was a treat as I usually have to walk alone!

On one of our trips to Wal-mart for paint, we come home and Tom opens the back the vehicle and quicker than anything, one of the paint cans jumps out of the vehicle, busts on the concrete and flys open, spewing all the paint across the concrete driveway!  It’s one of those things that’s so horrifying, you just stare at it for a while before you can even think of what to do.  Literally two-thirds of the can was already on the driveway before we could jerk it upright.  The paint blob is growing by the second, as it expands and expands, so Tom says he’ll just hose it off the driveway.  Well, guess what?  The water had been turned off at our hose spigot for the winter.  He had found a spigot earlier in the week that would work, so he gets the hose hooked up.  Turns out the hose he found has a hole in it, so water is spraying everywhere out of the hole – oh, yeah, and the hose nozzle had been run over or something and wouldn’t fit on the end of the hose, so you had to hold your thumb there to make the hose squirt – can you picture this? 

Paint blob expanding, hose squirting, wind blowing, cold….I can laugh now, but it truly was not a laughing matter.  I wished I had videotaped it as we may have been able to be a commercial for an insurance catastrophe, if insurance covered these things!

It took about two hours to get this paint cleaned up – and by then, some of it had dried to the bottom of the blob pile, so we had to use the bathroom Soft Scrub to try to scrub that part up, all of which did not even come up, so that may be another summer job.  Oh, and then we put the paint can in the trash with plastic stuffed down in it (why we didn’t put it in its own bag is beyond me) so the next day when the garbage people came, more paint dribbled out on to the driveway – and I hate to see the garbage man’s head!  This is one of those stories that is so funny when it’s happening to someone else – but I have got to praise my husband today for how he handled it. 

I hear in the courtroom he is extremely Type A, no one gets by with anything, he can be short, brusque, aggravated, but he is the easiest husband to be married to, totally opposite of that “judicial” temperament.  That said, in the past, when something like this would happen, he could turn into a total grouch – never cussed, carried on, but he did his fair share of huffing and puffing and slamming and banging.  Since he’s been saved, the Lord has done such a work on his anger and short temper, such a testament to how God changes us from the inside out.  With this paint incident, not one huff, puff, not even a “righteous fit,” LOL.  It is amazing how our Lord works on us from the inside out….praise His name!

When thinking about this paint blob, several spiritual analogies come to mind:  Could it be that you have an addiction that you think you have shut up, and when you just crack open the door, it flies out and begins to be a blob that expands and expands until it ruins everything?  Or could it be an attitude that you think you have tamped down, but just that crack that breaks it open lets that attitude ruin everything you touch?  Perhaps your “paint can” is a grudge you’re holding against someone, and you do really well until you see them and then the blob begins to grow….
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Lesson for the day – NEVER put paint cans near the door of the vehicle – they just may ruin your day!