I am a homeowner so I often find myself in situations where I must spend a good deal of money for seemingly trivial things. I never thought something so fuzzy, so small, so stinky, would cause such a problem in my house.
We have a shower in the upstairs of our house. From time to time, we find that we have to make minor repairs to faucets, drains, and water bearing types of all kind. This shower that exists upstairs in our house seems to have its share of leaks. In the past three years we’ve patched walls, replaced pipes, and even sent small elves into the walls searching for areas where wetness may exist.
When my wife called me at work to tell me that there was a flood in the kitchen, I wasn’t surprised. My only shock was that my wife had not yet built a boat and sailed out of the house entirely. Admittedly that would’ve been pretty funny, except for the fact that she had my two small daughters in tow.
I told her where she could turn the water off for the upstairs as the water continued to drain at a rate that rivaled Niagara Falls into her kitchen. This caused the walls to bubble, the counters to get wet, and the gnashing of teeth. As soon as the water was turned off, my faithful bride decided to call the plumber. He quickly arrived to assess the situation, only to tell us that we had to replace the majority of the pipes that were found in the wall behind the tub at the time.
“How much is this going to cost?”
“How much do you have?”
That was always something I wanted to hear from somebody who had come to work on my abode. I had a fleeting thought of simply writing a blank check and telling them to get the job done, but my wife hides the checkbook and I don’t know where it is.
I decided I wanted to watch the plumber for a couple of reasons:
In the first place, I wanted to learn how to do this so that if it ever happened to happen again, I would be prepared. I was a man, dang it, and I was going to be the best dang man I knew.
I wanted to make sure that when this guy charged me $400,000 to fix the wall that I was getting my money’s worth in gold piping and caviar dreams.
As he started to chip away at the tile it became apparent that there was an abundance of mold behind the tub, in the wall, and surrounding the pipes. It seemed the mold had been growing for years especially since it had receipts for college loans, was growing hair, and had artifacts of the Ice Age embedded in its soft, warm interior.
By the end of the day, half the shower had to be ripped out and replaced with a nice, new, vinyl material that made my upstairs bathroom look like the Marriott Marquis.
This whole thing got me thinking. How much is sin like mold to our souls? Especially venial sin which starts out under the surface, barely noticeable, and most of the time excusable. Slowly it grows, ever faster, fed by our excuses and justifications.
In time, the mold starts to grow hair just as the sin starts to bear fruit. We find ourselves becoming more angry, vindictive, and snappy at people that we used to be very patient with. In time, that small, justified venial sin grows into something more mortal, ugly, and deadly. (Yes, mold can be deadly.)
What happens when sin becomes mortal? We have to call the plumber. We have to call the priest. We have to call the expert. We have to call the one person who can reach down into our souls and take the mold and pull it out. If we don’t, then we get used to the sin and it eats away at our very lives.
Mold is gross.
