I spent the day with Ben roofing with this dude Erik Miller and his crew. We were up somewhere near Clevland, past Akron. I had prayed earlier this week that God would humble me. So, when Don asked the guys on Wednesday if any of us wanted to roof with Erik, I went for it.
I have never really roofed before in my life. If you don't know what roofing is, basically it involves ripping shingles off a roof, and putting new ones on. It sounds easy and mindless, but it is by no means. I did a decent job of ripping the shingles off, but when Bo (one of the crew guys) asked me to be his "Pitcher", I had no idea what was that involved me doing. So I had to ask him what pitching is. He just looked at me and smiled, knowing that I have no experience roofing, and said "you are the guy that hands me the new shingles so I can nail them on." I felt like an idoit. Duh, that makes so much sense.
So Bo gets his nail gun (which is wiked sick by the way... you could easily shoot someones eye out) and I hand him a shingle. Apperently there is a method to handing shingles, and I wasn't understanding it. You have to be so precise to helping the nailer if you want the job to get done quickly. Then you have to re load the shingles and move as the nailer gets closer and closer to the top of the roof. Its a lot to think about.
So Bo let me go at it for a half hour, and then realizes that I was slowing him down, so he told me to go clean up around the house. There was this big pile of gutters on the ground that the crew had just tore off. Erik told me to to put them in the truck. So, I put them in the truck, with out really thinking about it. About a half hour later, I had just finished sweeping up this awening on the other side of the house. I tried to sweep it as clean as I could, because there was leaves and dirt, and old shigles all over the place. Bo noticed my diligency. He goes "Well, you swept the crap out of that awening". Being witty, I told him "Erik told me he wanted it so clean that he could eat off it.. so mabye you should go get some of those burgers we had for lunch and dump them on the awening so you can see." Bo just smiled. He looks at me and goes... "You are a good listener, but one thing you lack at your young age is discernment." And he points to the truck where i loaded the gutter. Each gutter was sticking off the back of the truck about 15 feet.
I just stood there and started laughing at myself. The the guys were houling with laughter. Erik goes "I dont know what is funnier... the practicality that everything on the truck will fall of when we start it, or that the gutters are about 12 feet beyond the legal limit and would totally crush any car behind us if they fell of." An image of a corvette getting smashed by all the gutters falling off as we drove down 77 came to mind.
So, I asked God to humble me. He sure did. I looked like an idiot in front of an expereinced roofing crew. More than once. But the guys were really chill about it and enjoyed that I provided the humor for the day. Humor is needed on a work site or someone will feel like they want to shoot somebody. It was a really fun day. I learned a lot. And my prayer was answered.
1 Peter 5:6 says "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you."
How true it is.
JN
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