Tottering Fences

Psalm 62:3

Like a leaning wall and a tottering fence.

This was the only reference I can find to a fence in the whole Bible. I took out the un-PC part of the verse because it is really not relevant to this blog post.

About ten days ago, we have a gusty storm blow through during the late night and early morning. Earlier in the evening, I had noticed that the door had been blown off my plastic storage shed so I checked on it first thing in the morning at 5:20 when I got up for work.

To my surprise, I saw this out in the backyard:

It looked like a UFO had crashed in my backyard. It took me a sec to figure out that it was the townhouse 3 doors down trampoline. I walked out back and tried to move it and it weighed what felt like 200 pounds.  Earlier this summer, God had used the trampoline to remind me of the joys of childhood because the kids would  bounce on it for hours, laughing the whole time. I found myself having to correct my spirit. Initially, I was getting irritated at the noise of the merriment but then I considered how sad a world it would be without children's laughter. So, I learned to rejoice rather than be resentful.

How sad it is when children don't have happiness as kids. I heard it said about Afghanistan recently that there are children there but no childhood. I am thankful that I had a fairly happy childhood because it reminded me that life could be good, something that had been almost drown during my teen years.   

The only casualty is the trampoline being flung about a 100 feet where two pieces of the fences' cross-wood beams.

Essentially, the pieces had snapped in two like femurs. The fence is my primary defense from marauding groundhogs intent on pillaging my garden greens. Unlike my previous garden at my former house where the groundhogs burrowed under and climbed over the fencing, my little Eden has not yet been laid waste by the nefarious beasts. The key is that they don't know my garden resides inside the wooden fencing. For if they knew, the fencing would not be sufficient protection from their ravenous consumption.

Initially, I was a bit frustrated that my neighbor's down the way had not secured the trampoline properly. But, I considered that it was just one of those things and I shouldn't get fired up about it. It is kind of funny but it caused me to remember when I drove a beater car. I was impervious to additional scratches, dents, dirt, and bird crap. The car was already of a such lowly estate, that it had bottomed out on the status scale. Same thing with where I live. It is far from Bent Creek (a posh gated community in Lancaster County). So, my townhouse is fairly subsistence-level and stuff like this doesn't real demean it. I mean, I wanted to get the fence fixed and all, but I faced little psychic fall-out from the besmirching of the structure.

It is kind of like the value of humility. If we are humble, we don't take an ego blow when life's winds knock us down. Instead, we can laugh at ourselves and mend the broken fences. 

The neighbor came over later in the day and I was at peace with what had happened. No accusatory attitude on my part. He promised that he would address it. I was heartened by his willingness to step up and make it right without running away from his responsibility. Several years back, my Honda Civic had been hit by another driver when I was parked and I was completely innocent. What then transpired was an abdication of responsibility from the driver, the owner of the car, the Lancaster City Police, and the two insurance companies involved. It was really disgraceful and very disheartening to see the collective disengagement of the other parties which essentially left me to deal with the accident alone, the one who was innocent. So, I concluded from that the Lancaster Police were corrupt and the insurance companies were a Den of Thieves. In Good  Hands? My ass. 

Today, my neighbor and his construction friend came over and followed through on what we had agreed would be suitable compromise:

The handyman had explained in Spanish and my neighbor translated that pulling off the old pieces of gated wood from the cross-wood beams really was not going to work because the nails were embedded deeply into the beams. It would have to be a total fence replacement of that section. I could  have pressed for this but decided that it was not necessary. We came to an agreement that it would be easier and far less expensive to buttress the broken cross-wood with two new beams, like splints. I requested that he also cut out the jagged sections of the broken-beams and insert two blocks of wood, so that the first cross-wood just would not sit there and rot away. So, when I paint it, it will look similar to the other fencing.

One thing that had frustrated my about the hit and run accident was the pissing on the principle involved by all parties involved except me: If you break something, you fix it. What has been such a pleasant conclusion to all of this, is that the principle was adhered to and we reached an equitable solution. It is not a perfect solution but good enough for me. I have also developed a more friendly relationship with my neighbor down the way. Accidents happen, so does grace. It fixes the broken places.