Take a Plunge

Good Plunger

Bad Plunger

A couple weeks ago upon waking up, I groggily stumbled into the bathroom only to discover our toilet was clogged and had subsequently overflowed. Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day, indeed. After getting over the initial annoyance at the discovery, I told myself to man-up and get to work. I, after all, am a fairly independent, resourceful 22 year old woman! So I grabbed the plunger and did what you are suppose to do with a plunger- I began plunging.

That morning I learned for the first time that not all plungers are created equal. After about sixty seconds of laborious plunging, I noticed that the water level had not decreased in even an infinitesimal amount. I repositioned the plunger thinking maybe I just hadn't placed it where it would get the optimal suction and began again. Another sixty seconds. Nothing. At this point I was exasperated. You are suppose to be a plunger! Why aren't you plunging?! You dare to have the audacity not to do your job?! I demanded, elevating the plunger from the toilet (yes, I occasionally talk to inanimate objects).

Luckily, I knew my old roommate has a plunger that actually cares enough to do its job, thank you very much. So I ran over and grabbed it. Five minutes and a generous amount of spent energy later, all systems were a go.

I've thought about this incident in a metaphorical sense ever since. At the time that this inopportune mishap happened, I felt like my life was clogged. Everything was building up and nothing was flowing as it should have been. Like I did that morning, I tried to fix it with a poor excuse of a plunger. I made up excuses, blamed others, ate more junk food.

Thank goodness I realized my mistake and recently began applying the real-deal plunger techniques. To put it simply: I went to work. No more excuses, no more blaming, no more (or significantly less) junk food. Much more prayer, reading, serving, and smiling. Ironically, it seems that the best way to plunge my life isn't to just remove obstacles, it means filling life with more of what counts.