Keeping Our Center ~ Day 131

Here’s my last ASP story. One year our 6-person crew was assigned Miss Judy’s house. As happens in Appalachia when the houses are built into the sides of the mountains, when it rains, the water runs down the slope and under the house and eventually rots everything out. 

The previous crew had dug a small drainage ditch across the back of the house to catch the water and funnel it around the side of the house and down the hill. Unfortunately they had filled it with gravel that wasn’t heavy enough and had washed down the hill with the last good rain. One of our jobs, in addition to scraping and painting the house and replacing the rotten, termite infested back wall, was to put heavier stones in that ditch. 

We waited and waited for that stone to be delivered. Finally it was our last day, and it still hadn’t arrived by lunch time. The family wasn’t around so we took ourselves out for lunch at the nearby Pizza Hut. When we returned, there it was! Four tons of heavy gravel and good sized rocks (like football sized) and just a few hours to move it before we’re done for the week and heading home. 

First things first... gloves. Where the heck were my gloves? My old, worn, dirty, beloved gloves that had been on every ASP trip with me. I looked all over and then remembered that earlier I had seen them lying in the middle of the driveway with a bunch of other things. Yep, you guessed it, my gloves were now under that four ton pile of rock! 

We worked like crazy for the next 3-4 hours, putting two people on a wheelbarrow to push the stone up the hill and behind the house. There were a few moments of hysteria, born of sheer exhaustion, along the way, but by 5 p.m. we were scraping away the last of the stones and there, flat as a pancake on a hot southern griddle, were my gloves! In a very rare show of religiousness, I flopped to my knees and said a silent prayer of gratitude. 

Before we left we found a large flat rock, grabbed a black Sharpie, and left the family a note: Keep the Faith. Signed by each of us. 

That’s still the message today: Keep the Faith. Faith that together we will get through the tough times. Faith that even when things seem impossible, there is a way. Faith that better days are ahead. Faith that the Divine is with us, even when it doesn’t feel like it. Faith that there are still plenty of good people out there. Faith that love will eventually conquer over hate. Faith that when you put your mind to something and you’re working with a great group of people, amazing things can be accomplished.

Love & Light!

Kaye