Interesting Epiphany or When the Sky Started Falling

Yesterday the kids and I went over to the church because the community ministries that we help with is moving to a different part of the church and we were helping out. While there I got a call from Glenn asking where we were and saying that he really needed us to come home to help because part of the roof had fallen in in the back room. (At least that's what I thought he said.) I ran around gathering kids, telling them we really needed to get home and we ran home to help where we could.

As it was it turns out it was the ceiling, not the roof (Glenn probably said ceiling and I, in my panic, just heard roof).

 I guess that some animal had chewed the insulation stuff off our pipes and, with the temps under 20 the previous night, the pipes above the ceiling had frozen. It could have been horrible but here are things we're thankful for:

- Glenn's afternoon clinic had unexpectedly been cancelled so he was home at the time. (The kids and I probably wouldn't have gotten home for another half hour after we did and that would have been almost 2 hours after the pipes had burst - our house would have been flooded, tons of stuff destroyed and lots more damage would have been done to the house, etc, etc, etc.)
- Glenn had been in the room doing Wii Fit while waiting for us to get home when he heard and saw the water start flowing and was able to get some stuff moved before chunks of the ceiling started falling.
- Glenn was home and knew to and knew how to turn the water main off. I would have had no clue!! (Again, saving from a lot more damage.)
- Our landlord was close by. When Glenn called him he was actually just behind our house checking on the garage apartment back there that is vacant.
- The landlord's handyman was able to make it over and do a temporary patch job to make it so we could turn our water back on. (Hurray for being able to go potty in our own house!)

It could have been so. much. worse! We kept talking about what we are grateful for and and mentioning God's providence and how He worked things out. It took me back to our catechism book:
Q11. What is God's providence?
A. God's providence is His completely holy, wise and powerful preserving and governing every creature and every action.

I'm thankful that, in God's providence, Glenn's clinic was cancelled yesterday afternoon so he was home when the ceiling starting coming down in the back bedroom/ school room. Now we get to heat the outside as we wait for the remaining parts of the ceiling and insulation to dry before the handyman will come back and fix the hole in the ceiling. I'm, once again, so thankful that we don't own this house!! I'm thinking that our landlord probably wishes it wasn't his either.

Our normal tradition is to have our Magi and their entourage finally arrive at the baby Jesus, exchange gifts and eat Chinese take out (since the magi came from the East) on Epiphany so while the handy man was working on the pipes we exchanged gifts and phoned in orders to two local restaurants. We had never ordered from the Lebanese or the Chinese restaurant before so we ordered too much and ended up with tons of food. I guess we'll have leftovers for several days.

After dinner Glenn and the kids had an all out Nerf gun war and then we played another round of 10 Days in the USA. (It's our game of the week that we picked up on clearance at Hobby Lobby.) After that we did Thank Yous and read "The King of all kings" from The Jesus Storybook Bible.

It was not your typical Epiphany celebration but it was a good day. I got to spend most of it with my favorite people. God was, again, so gracious to us and I, again, wonder why He chooses to be so gracious to unworthy us.