Mazur Manor: French Trench, Part 2

We’ve finally completed our French Drain and can officially place this project in our COMPLETED pile. Those wimpy little ditches I dug over two years ago needed a little attention during an extremely wet spring season this year. Austin spent a couple of days deepening the trenches (shoveling dense clay is NO JOKE, people). Then, we were blessed by the addition of two more able hands to finish the job! Austin’s good friend and brother in Christ had a few problems of his own and we “bore one another’s burdens”, you could say.

...Wish I had pictures of the drains in place, but Austin ran over his phone with the mower (lost all photos)... A day in the life!

About a year prior to all of this, Austin took a month or two off from working to maintenance all three of our vehicles, plus a little work on Bryan’s truck (Austin’s brother). My car needed work on all things rotors, wheel bearings, brake pads… and so on. His truck had a whole “under body” makeover. And Bryan’s new truck, at the time, had a bolt rusted on that they battled to the death in order to do the very same (Bryan is Austin’s brother).

BOY was last Spring a mess!

BUT WHAT’S NEW?

Only the day and it’s particular problem.

The one thing that’s constant is that we’ll face perpetual challenges - the one thing a Christian finds hope in, is that the Lord works them all for His greater good, in fulfilling His plan and His purpose for each of us.

To say the least, Austin received on-the-job training to be a mechanic… Which came in extremely handy when Rene brought Jessica’s (Rene’s wife) SUV over for the same issues my car had - though hers were extremely overdue for maintenance and she was unable to drive she and her daughter safely. I came home from work each day to one of three things: 1) two men covered in dirt, with blistered hands from shoveling, 2) two men covered in soot, lying underneath a jack up car in the barn, or 3) two men, still dirty, on my couch playing Nintendo Smash Bros (I suppose all work and no play is a bit taxing on one’s mental health). It also helps to have yummy food to lighten up the burdens - for them, this meant $2.50 for two slices of pizza and a refillable soda at Sam’s Club every day. You’d never know my husband is married to a nurse.

Austin had been using a wheelbarrow to transfer gravel from a pile in our driveway up the hill to the trench, where he poured each load over the drains he had covered with landscaping fabric. Well, the wheel blew out. So, this is what Austin created to solve the problem - a mechanical masterpiece!

Austin and Rene worked parallel projects for a few weeks until all the necessary parts arrived for Jessica’s car, whether they were loading and unloading stones for the basement wall… digging… or turning wrenches… they worked day in, and day out! Things chugged along, hitting barrier after barrier to progress. The wrong gravel was delivered. The mechanical masterpiece’s battery kept dying. The source of cash kept drying. The rains came and took away whole days for work. The parts delayed in arrival or weren’t the right fit! Not to mention the pain deep within their bones from the work itself… You name it… it happened.

Through the carrying out of these projects, I found myself in a life threatening car accident, which the Lord delivered me out of with merely a bruise and some soreness. Because we loaned our Chrysler to Jessica, Austin and I shared his beat up Dodge Ram to get us wherever we needed to be. Jessica had a health scare one evening, amidst their other life stresses. They'd been struggling in a bad housing situation, and were forced to move without assurance of income, as they had been in between jobs and caring for their 3 year old daughter.

HOW OVERWHELMING.... those stressors that come like a hurricane in the midst of our sea of problems.

After about a month, Jessica was able to trade back our Chrysler she'd borrowed (the size of which made her look like a child driving illegally), for her SUV. The Trenches were filled and and proved to be functional. My vehicle was replaced and all of us were driving safely. Rene was hired to maintenance an apartment complex, which offered them a solution to their housing and income dilemmas. Austin and Rene grew their friendship and fellowship in the Lord, truly bearing with one another in love, exhorting each other as they faced their individualized giants as each day passed.

The moments we feel we are drowning in our trenches, are the very moments that God has preordained vessels to lift us up! The rains inevitably come, but the Lord is always faithful - We will not drown.

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Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep

Romans 12:15

Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Galatians 6:2

and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you

1 Thessalonians 4:11

but exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today," that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin

Hebrews 3:13