The Widow Maker

There are an infinite number of things--diseases, natural disasters, gang related issues, and on and on the list goes-- that could aptly be named "widow makers" in this country.  For that matter, the Pan-American highway could be called a widow maker.  It's so much better than it used to be, but there are still lots of places where you could find yourself face to face with Jesus if you weren't paying attention to the fact that the lane you're in has fallen off the mountain, or that the pothole you're about to hit is big enough to swallow your whole car, or that there's a sinkhole that's taken a chunk of median out, or that you are now sharing a lane with oncoming traffic,....but today's post is about none of those things.  Today I'm writing to you about the bane of my existence--our shower.

Why in the world is our shower called a widow maker, you ask?  Well, it's simple, really.  With the exception of rich people and fancy hotels, no one here has a hot water heater.  Since I am not rich, this includes our house.  As a matter of fact, as you can see in the picture, there is only one knob in the shower.  It's for cold water. Now see that green contraption with all the live wires hanging out of it?  There's a close-up below. That's the widow maker.  As the water comes into the bathroom, it goes through that green canister where there is a live wire that heats the water just before it falls out of the showerhead. Sound dangerous?  It is.  Hence it's name. So what keeps us from electrocuting ourselves every time we bathe?  The fact that the water does not fall in a steady stream, but rather in drops that break up the electrical current.  So if you're tall (which thankfully Jessie and I are not) you have to be super careful not to actually touch the showerhead while water is coming out, because if you do, you're going to get zapped.  (In all honestly, I've only ever heard of one person who died here using this contraption, and I think he was single...no widow left behind.) 

Now add to that the fact that we sometimes have running water and sometimes not, that we sometimes have electricity and sometimes not, and that when we DO have elecricity, it's terrible because it's only 110, (and sometimes I question that) and you might begin to understand why I have such a love/hate relationship with our shower.  If our water pressure is too low, the widow maker will not switch on and we get a cold shower.  If it is too forceful, it will switch on but not heat the water enough, and we get a cold shower.  Sometimes we get hot water just until I have put conditioner in my hair, and then for some ridiculous reason it switches itself off. The little dance that ensues is always fun, especially when it's 50 degrees inside the house because we have no indoor heat either.

So why am I telling you all this? Partly to give you a little taste of what life can be like here, and partly to vent, I suppose.  I truly shouldn't complain.  Most of my friends  get to bathe in the dirty river or with a bucket of cold water.  Our frigid, potentially lethal shower is definitely a cut above that. But since we have electricity, running water, and a widow maker, I expect that I should get to take a hot shower.  Then when I can't, I find myself getting pretty frustrated.  Ok, mad. So mad I could spit nails. But I have visited places where a hot shower is not even an option, and it didn't frustrate or anger me because I had no expectation of a hot shower.    So this shower situation got me to analyzing the role that expectations play in our attitude.  Could it be that the majority of our frustration stems from unmet expectations? And if that's true, how do we then adjust our expectations?  If I had the answer to that, I suppose I'd be rich enough to get a hot water heater--HAHA!  So far as I can figure, the thing is to recognize that all this real-life craziness that we all live in is temporary. Only eternity matters.  Psalm 62:5 "My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from Him."  I have a funny feeling it won't be long before I have the opportunity to practice that in our freezing cold shower.