In 2010 we bought a fixer upper – it had been in a family for 50 years and just needed some help! We wondered why anyone would want an institutional looking drop ceiling in the dining room, but once we pulled it down that question was quickly answered. Somehow, at some point in time there had been a water leak that had destroyed a bunch of the plaster and left a hole in the original ceiling. About a week later, with the help of a torrential rain pushed by a strong south wind, the question of “somehow” became obvious, and “some point in time” became “at this present moment!”
The sealant around the base of a dormer had shrunk, and the cracks and gaps were enough to allow quite a bit of water to leak into the house, through the hole in the ceiling, and into my hastily rounded up buckets and trash cans.
Q: When is the best time to fix your roof?
A: When it’s not raining!
Thank you for attending my Ted Talk.
But seriously, the best time to work on your roof is while it is dry, and also BEFORE it has started to leak. Next best would be like me, I guess, where you notice it leaking and then wait for the storm to blow over before making repairs. Then the worst would be having to crawl out on the roof during a hurricane and try to patch things up while it is raining sideways…
This is also true for the “roof” of your life and relationships, and this where Sandy Cove can help.
When things in life are dry and sunny, Sandy Cove is a great place for preventative maintenance, as you spend intentional time with God and people you care about. It’s like adding some sealer around your dormer on a regular basis so it never gets close to leaking. What a concept!
More likely, there are storm clouds on your horizon, if not regular showers passing over, and this is when Sandy Cove can hold an umbrella for you, while handing you tools and repair materials. The idea is not that you come to Sandy Cove to escape from problems only to return to them later, but instead find this the ideal place and time to address them. For example, if you come to Family Camp you are away from work, commuting, dentist appointments, grocery shopping, and weeding the garden. We will cook for you, clean up for you, smile at you, and invite you to watch the sunset instead of TV. You can relax by the pool, and have a great time with the kids at mini golf, the wavecutter, or the zip line. But besides being out of the storms of life for a moment, you also have a chance to engage with some great Bible teaching, to have an uninterrupted conversation with your spouse, to take time to listen to God, to step back and look at his big picture, and process it with a life coach. These are just a few of the ways that things are patched up, roofs are made watertight again, and you leave ready again for more rain.
So if preventative maintenance on the roof of your life and relationships with God and your family seems like a good idea, but you aren’t sure where to start, why not start here? Consider joining us for Family Camp this summer, or one of our couples weekends. (Or if your marriage is in a hurricane, and it’s raining sideways, see about one of our Marriage Intensives!) Come in out of the rain, and fix your roof!
