Clogged.

I stopped an intruder breaking into our home over the weekend. The good news is it all went down while the kids were gone.

For the past 4 days, we'd been dealing with a clogged toilet. Because I'm stubborn, proud and too lazy to call a plumber, I kept working on it myself. Plunger. Roto Rooter. Hot Water. Some stupid "green" solution using kitchen items. I had tried it all and nothing was working.

I finally broke down and borrowed my dad's plunger, which is better than mine. Yeah, I know, aren't all plungers created equally?

I also borrowed his snake. A disgusting and annoying tool of plumbers everywhere that's a lot like that weird thing they do in medical dramas when they jam the tube down somebody's throat. And let's also establish the truth that I don't like anything with the word snake in it. Except maybe Whitesnake. But other than that snake brings nothing redeeming or encouraging to my mind.

If I'm being honest and I'd like to think I am, snaking a toilet is just about as awful a task as I've had to do as a home owner. It's like playing the disgust-o lottery. You are gambling on what will turn up and the odds of getting a prize you actually want is pretty much slim. What could you possibly find deep in the pipes of your toilet that you want? And yet you hope every time you do it that something does turn up since your toilet is broken.

As a sidelight, if you ever find yourself snaking a toilet make sure its not rusty and sharp like my dads. Otherwise you will end up scraping the inside of your toilet like crazy leaving it unclogged but looking worse than ever. Not that it happened to me mind you. Not saying I'm now researching how to restore the ceramic finish on the inside of my toilet bowl. But I could be.

So off I go "snaking my toilet" or in other words, wasting a perfectly good Sunday night when my kids are gone. And much to my dismay I learn that doing this particular task is something that must require a class or an apprenticeship because I can't seem to make any progress.

I finally begin to succeed when I encounter a stopping point. According to my extensive online research this is good news and may be moment of breakthrough. I find this both encouraging and terrifying.

So off I go, cranking clockwise. It's kind of like fishing except instead of an amazing Salmon or Steelhead out of the Deschutes River in Eastern Oregon I'm trying to pull something out of my toilet. It's like River Monsters meets Dirty Jobs.

And then it happens.

The water changes color a bit. Turns out that's the rust off the snake. But I see something in the shallow, murky, cold water. But in this significant moment of breakthrough I reach right in.

Since I've had time to reflect I realize this was stupid. In this case it worked out but I feel as though any time I would do this for the rest of my life it will not work out as well.

And that's when I found the intruder. Trying to sneak his way into our home and swipe all the things we love. It's a plastic Swiper toy from Dora the Explorer.

And he has this annoying grin on his face.

The next day I asked the kids about our masked toilet clogger. Turns out they were well aware he was in there. For the sake of time I won't record the dialogue that happened after that. Let's just say it involved a number of questions from me met with blank stares and shoulder shrugging from the kids.

Based on my interrogation though it sounds as though Swiper was working alone.

I've since returned my dad's snake and his vastly superior but unnecessary plunger. And it seems as though things are once again working as they should. Now to fix all those scratches.

Sight

After a fun day serving in East New York, our team was walking back to the subway to begin our trek home to Brooklyn. All week there have been interactions with folks on the street that everybody in our group has at one time or another. Sometimes its one of the guys from LMFAO panhandling in the Subway and other times it is friendly folks curious why 27 white folks from the midwest have come to the city. My favorite question by one Manhattan worker turned teacher today was "Did they come here to see what real poverty looks like?"

But as we approached the entrance to the Subway and prepared for 45 minutes underground with our thoughts, the now familiar screech of metal on metal and whoever God crossed our path with, I was stopped by a lady. "What are you guys, some company or organization?" I explained who we were and she shared how good what we were doing was. She happened to be living in the shelter we had served today. A place filled with 40 beds that are always filled by women escaping violent and abusive situations. "I've got some things I need to get right in my life," she said, "but after that I'm gonna do mission service with my life too. That's what God has in store for me." And at that point I thought this had been a cool interaction. "I have an artificial eye." she continued. "I lost it a domestic violence situation but I'm getting better."

I don't believe in any of that teleportation stuff that they do in Star Trek. But I do think there are moments where we are transported to another time and place as stories connect. In that moment it happened to me. Suddenly I wasn't in New York anymore but in a special little town in Cambodia. And it wasn't a woman I'd never met before who was before me but a little girl. And she was blind in both eyes from a different type of physical violence. And once again I wasn't angry as much as I was broken.

There's a lot of places my mind runs at this very moment. I've had a little time to think about this, I've been confronted with a though and scripture from my friend Joel that whacked me in the soul while he was leading a debrief of his students. So why do I share this here? I think because I need help to process and sometimes writing helps me.

Here's what I know: my little boy will respect all women all the time. He will treat them with dignity and he will protect them like he would his own sister. I know why i love my little girl so much and why I care who she meets, where she goes and who she will date some day. I don't own a shotgun, truth is I probably couldn't load one but I am tall, bald and ugly and that has its advantages as well.

But more than all that I'm reminded of why kingdom work matters. Everything we do, no matter who we are has the opportunity to redeem. To reconcile. To reconnect. It has the opportunity to provide hope. And healing. Whether it is preaching a sermon, pulling weeds, giving a kind glance or giving a few dollars to show people that they are worth something. Its why I love my friends here in New York who are giving their lives to help people connect with Jesus. Its why I love these 20 8th grade kids who are using their spring break to learn and serve and grow. And its why I'm praying that they all bring hope to the world in whatever way God's gifted them to do so. Even that one who won't shut up when we turn the lights out to go to sleep at night.

And its why I'm praying one of them falls in love with the particular city and comes back here to live and serve.

And its why I'm praying for my friend I met on the sidewalk to be restored so she can claim beauty out of ashes.

And its why I'm praying for my sister in the faith in Cambodia that she will continue to be transformed into the beautiful flower God has designed her to be in the midst of the dry and dusty soil she was planted in.