It All Seems to Hit the Fan at Once

We got hit with a one-two punch in the last 24 hours.  First, late last night my husband noticed that a sizeable section of the ceiling in our laundry room was bowed out and cracking.  We suspected it was connected to a problem in the master bathroom above, where we had been feeling a portion of the floor that seemed spongy, like water had gotten underneath the linoleum and softened the subflooring.  James called American Home Shield, and as they considered it an emergency, they planned to have someone contact us on Sunday morning and come out that day if possible.

James stayed home from church and waited, and the call came just before 10:45.  After talking with James, the plumber said that he was pretty sure the culprit is a leak in the seal between the bathtub and the floor or around the tub drain, and that it was slowly leaking down into the drywall of the laundry room ceiling.  He didn't seem to feel it was an emergency and set an appointment to come out on Monday morning at 9:30.

We're pretty sure fixing the leak is going to involve pulling up the floor and subfloor in the bathroom.  We don't know if more will need to come out, but at the very least, bringing everything back to normal afterward is going to require replacing the subfloor, and replacing the flooring through the whole bathroom, in addition to taking out the drywall in the laundry room and replacing that, too.  We're hoping and praying that it doesn't snowball into any bigger kind of problem, like mold.  I don't know if the toilet or bathtub will need to be pulled out to fix things, but this could turn into something big quickly.  And in the month before Christmas, so it would be hard to find worse timing.

So that's problem #1.  Problem #2 occurred tonight, when the washing machine showed an error code that translates to "Contact for service."  It's not like the other minor codes we've seen that just require unplugging the machine and letting it sit for a bit, then plugging it back in, and everything works fine.  We bought our machine when we moved here over 4 1/2 years ago, so it's way past the warranty, and we didn't buy the appliance coverage from American Home Shield (DANGIT!) since we didn't think we'd need it any time soon.

James is currently downstairs with the machine partially taken apart, working to try to fix it so that we don't have to pay someone to repair that, too.  I'm trying to remain calm and not freak out thinking about all the "What ifs?"

Especially since my car has also been sounding really strained, and I'm going to be taking it in soon to see what's wrong.  Hopefully something minor, but it never seems to turn out that way with car repairs, does it?

I'm starting to feel like a really tightly-wound ball of stress and have to seriously work on committing this to the Lord before I end up with stomach pains, as I tend to do when I hold onto stress and internalize things.  I'm reminding myself of Philippians 4:6-7:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.


Praying about things probably isn't going to magically cause my car to stop making that sound, or the washing machine to put itself back together in working order, or the laundry ceiling to move back into place and the bathroom floor to feel normal.  But it will allow me to deal with all of this without wanting to pull my hair out, and with the assurance that God knows it's all happening and will bring us through while granting the peace that I really desperately need right now.