One Score and Two Years Ago

     Let's face it, people, my hubby is a hero. Now, heroes come in many forms, such as firefighters, emergency workers, doctors, nurses, teachers, and even to little children who love big trucks, the garbage man. Yet, on all the signs that I have seen along the sides of the roads during this isolation, none of them ever have pest control workers listed.  It is obvious to me after seeing how many calls are coming in for the business that pest control is essential.  With everyone at home right now, the fact is they are seeing more bugs. And so they call. And Joe comes to their rescue. 
       Joe is not only a hero because he helps people get rid of their mice and ants (as well as play the psychistrist with hysterical men and women who are convinced the no-see-ums will attack them in the night),  but he is also a hero when it comes to working around the house. Our house. That was one of the qualities I wanted in a man that I married because it was something my father did when I was growing up. I loved the smell of freshly cut wood, and the fact that anything broken was always fixable in his eyes. He always had some project in the works which gave him something to keep him busy when he was not in his office designing chips at IBM. 
       The busiest time for Joe is spring and summer so the home projects are put on hold during the months when everyone else is traveling and on vacation. So, I have had to learn to wait a little longer for things to get fixed around here during those times. But some things do not wait for the maintanence man. They just continue to break down. Therefore, Joe becomes a bigger hero to me when I need to call him during the middle of the day because a faucet decided to break in my hand and shoot water all around our bathroom.  Let me explain: 
            I was in the bathroom washing my hands when I noticed the water was still leaking after I turned the water off. The faucet had started doing this a few days before. I had found a way to fix it by giving the handle a little nudge backward to turn off the steady stream until it became a drip. Now, I always knew we had hard water, what with all the spots and white film that coated my dishes when we need to add more salt in the water softener. Plus I had seen how other faucets had become corroded from the minerals from our well water.
         I should have known better. I should have listened to the warning bells inside my head. But I still nudged the handle. I felt it give way and water began bubbling up around my hand. Within a few seconds it was not just bubbling, it was spraying up as the silver knob fell onto the sink. Quickly I covered the hole with my hand and pushed down as hard as I could. With my free hand I reached underneath the sink to try and turn the water off that way. The knobs would not budge.  The water was still coming out and my hand was hurting. I grabbed a towel and used that to press down. It helped slow the water a little, but I was still stuck. Panic set in. How was I going to get out of this mess? I'm locked in this bathroom and nobody knows I need help. How do I open the door and get the kids' attention while I hold back the floodgates?
          I changed hands and with my left hand I began banging the side of the wall, meanwhile hollering out the words HELP ME as loud as I could. I figured my loud noise and shouting would draw someone's attention. It felt like a millions years passed but finally one of my children came to find out what was going on. 
        We ended up changing places so I could grab the phone to call Joe as I raced downstairs to find the emergency water shut off. With his instructions I was able to turn off the water to the house and we temporarily fixed the flood gates. Granted, we did not have any water in the house for the rest of the day, but I had seen enough of it for the time being to not want anymore for awhile. 
        To make a long story short, Joe was my hero that night and fixed the faucet, and he also fixed the water nozzles underneath the sink. We can now turn the water on and off with a simple twist of the knobs. (He informed me that the old ones did not work anyway.  Say what? Why were they even under there then?)
        For us, life is always an adventure.  We never know what lies around the next bend. It could be a a flood in the house, a graduation of another child, or just a quaratine picnic at the park because that is the only place you can find to eat your hibachi. But it's all good. If you have not already figured out what the title of my blog means, I'll give you a hint:  today marks our twenty-second anniversary.  Twenty-two years with the man God put into my life to be my spouse. He has spent twenty-two years helping people get rid of bugs (first computer bugs and now wild scary hairy bugs), fixing things in our home, working audio/video stuff at church, and just being a hero. My hero. I may not say it often enough, but I am glad he is the one God chose for me to make this journey of life with. I am glad he is like my father in so many ways, including the fact that he loves the Lord first and foremost. So, Happy Anniversary to us! And may we celebrate many more years together as Joe continues to be everyone's hero. 

A last note: As I was just looking at the pictures below, it occurred to me that we had no idea what was going on below the surface of the faucet. It looked great on the outside, but it was being destroyed from the inside. Don't let that happen to your marriage. Be careful to guard both inside and out. Don't let corrosion break up a beautiful thing!