I woke up this morning to the barely audible breathing sounds of someone being v-e-r-y quiet outside my bedroom door.  As I slowly drifted back to reality from where ever I was while I was sleeping, I lay there, one with the mattress, with my eyes still shut, concentrating on feigning sleep. The carpeted floor gives a tell-tale groan whenever anyone walks over one particular, seemingly unavoidable spot there, so I didn't have to strain my ears long to be sure that other sound really was someone breathing. Very shortly, the floor groaned again, and I knew the "someone" had left.  A few delicious minutes went by and then I heard it again. I was pretty sure it was Emily, 3, checking on me to see if she could crawl into bed for a morning snuggle.  Sometimes she is too irresistible to ignore, and I was about to open my eyes to see her hopeful little face. Wait, just another minute of sleep..."Someone" was still there. I opened one eye. It wasn't her. It was my oldest daughter, Alizona.  When she saw that I was awake, she walked to my side of the bed and sighed a huge sigh. "What, Alison. What are you sighing about already?" She said, "Mom, I know you don't want to hear this, but our toilet is clogged.  I tried to unclog it but I didn't get it, and it overflowed all over the bathroom floor. Gross, icky toilet water." 

Are you with me here?  I am thinking, "Lord, is this how I have to start this day?  Because if it is, I do not want to get out of bed."  Well, I am pretty good about being calm over the big things.  It is the little things that I have a hard time with.  To me, brown stinky sewer water all over the bathroom floor is a big thing, a thing of gargantuan proportions when it is the first thing to greet me in the morning.  I tried my meek and quiet spirit on for size, and followed my daughter to the bathroom. In that short distance I had visions. Brown slimy water, mixed with goopy slimy toilet paper remains, cover the floor and stop at the hall carpet. The just-washed bath mat is soaked with it.  The trash can and toilet brush holder are floating in it.  I am wondering what I should use to clean it up, and whether I can catch some sort of E. coli disease doing it.

And guess what?!  The Lord rewarded me royally for giving the meek and quiet spirit a try! It was just a test!  And I PASSED!!! He is so good to me.  My quick-thinking Alison had had the presence of mind to turn the water off at the valve! So the yucky water was just in a little puddle at the base of the toilet!  The bath mat wasn't even close to wet, and there was not a thing floating in slime!  It took me one small towel to clean up the mess, while four pair of eyes carefully watched how to do it. (That's so that they could take care of it themselves the next time a clogged toilet threatened to wake me up, right?)  Wow. I got that little mess cleaned up in no time, wearing a smile the whole way.   I have never been so happy to have something NOT turn out the way I imagined...

I can explain the original description of this disaster by saying my daughter is twelve, almost thirteen years old.  "Gross, icky toilet water all over the bathroom floor" was a pretty age-appropriate exaggeration on her part, don't you think?  I am proud of her for attempting to use the plunger.  Waking me up wasn't in her original plans, at least!