The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Genesis 2:18 (NIV)
When the time came for my husband and I to re-do our bathroom we were a little overwhelmed by the amount of work and the cost of all that needed to be done. To save money, we decided to tackle some of the smaller projects ourselves. One of those projects was removing the toilet. We had never done anything like this before, but everything we read and everyone we talked to said it should be fairly easy.
We should have known better.
The night before the workers showed up my husband grabbed his tools and headed toward the bathroom to take out the toilet. I asked him if he needed my help as he walked by. He said he probably wouldn’t need me until it was time to lift it up off the floor and that he would call me when he was ready for me to help him.
After what seemed like hours I wondered why he hadn’t called for me — I’m not really sure if it was hours, but it sure seemed like it — so I decided to check on him. To my surprise, he appeared to be a little stressed. One of the bolts attaching the toilet to the floor refused to budge. I felt bad for him so I suggested he take a break and let me have a go at it. Surely I could do better. Right?
Wrong! I didn’t have any better luck than my husband. After about ten minutes of trying to will the bolt lose, I gave up and suggested we get bolt cutters and just cut the stubborn thing off. He finally agreed and off I went to Wal-Mart — because of course, Wal-Mart is the only thing open at such a late hour — in search of bolt cutters. I spent the entire ride there silently praying they would have bolt cutters because if they didn’t I wasn’t sure what we were going to do. The workers were supposed to be there super early in the morning. This toilet needed to come out. Like now…
Thankfully they had them. I was able to quickly buy them and run back home. Once home I quickly handed the bolt cutters to my man and waited for him to free the toilet from the clutches of this stubborn bolt. I was sure the fancy bolt cutters were the solution to our dilemma. We were going to show that bolt who was boss.
When facing an obstacle — stick together and refuse to give up! Tweet this!
We should have expected it wouldn’t be so easy. The bolt cutters were too big to fit in the tight space where our toilet resides. There was simply not enough room to allow us to cut it. Ugh…
But instead of giving up we put our heads together to try to come up with a solution. At first, nothing was coming, but after a few minutes of us blankly staring at the toilet together, my husband leaned down and slightly tilted the toilet to the right and it moved a little bit. This sudden movement was the ray of shining hope we had been waiting for! A light bulb went off in my head as I realized we might be able to turn the toilet around to make enough room to get the bolt cutters in there to cut it.
“What if we turn the toilet to the left? Do you think that will give us room to get in there and cut the bolt?” I asked. He said it was worth a try, so he carefully turned the toilet to the left a little bit. It definitely gave us more room, but the cutters were still too big to get in there and actually cut the bolt. I was beginning to think we were going to have to break the toilet to get it out of there. But then my husband turned the toilet to left a little more and the toilet came free. And when I say it came free, I mean it came out of the ground with ease. There was no tugging involved.
We had been trying to unscrew and then cut a bolt that wasn’t attached to anything. It had been sitting there just kind of hanging out the whole time. The room grew silent as the weight of what had just happened sunk in. I’m not sure we knew what to think. Do you laugh, cry, or yell when you realize you’ve been doing something for hours that didn’t need doing?
Once I finally got up the nerve, I looked over at my husband. When our eyes met I couldn’t help but giggle out a sigh of relief. He smiled at me which of course turned my giggle into a full-blown joyful laugh. And a few moments later my husband said the sweetest thing. He said, “I’m glad you came in here to help me. I couldn’t have gotten this done without you.”
God created us to work together as one to overcome the obstacles that come our way. Tweet this!
Don’t you love it when God uses an everyday obstacle to teach you something? The whole time I was in there by myself trying to unscrew that evil bolt I kept asking God to please loosen it! And when it wouldn’t come loose I would ask him why this was happening. Finally, I decided there must be something He wants us to learn, so I prayed that we wouldn’t miss the lesson He was trying to teach us. But secretly I really just wished He would loosen it because that would be so much easier than learning a lesson.
Genesis 2:18 tells us that it’s not good for us to do life alone. God created us to rely on one another, help each other, and live in community together. When the toilet finally came loose I realized God was trying to remind my husband and I how important it is to work together as one. In Ecclesiastes 4:9 it says, “two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor.“ When we were trying to remove the bolt by ourselves we were getting nowhere. It wasn’t until we worked together as a team that we were able to successfully remove the toilet.
Together we can help one another accomplish more.
Together we can support each other when the other gets tired.
Together we are stronger and harder to knock down.
Together we can overcome the obstacles that come our way — even if that obstacle is a stubborn bolt on a toilet.
Thank you so much for following along today! I hope you were encouraged to stick together when an obstacle comes your way! ~Kelly
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