Angels Among Us

For months now, we've been plagued by a retaining wall that we're trying to finish with our neighbor on the side yard.  At first, we didn't get it done because we wanted a date because we didn't want to dig out the yard and have the dogs get out all the time.  Then we realized that we're at the mercy of the weather.  In the end, we figured out that we just needed to get it done because the wall was waiting on us.

Unfortunately, Kris hurt his back and hasn't been able to do much physical labor.  That left me to take care of the job.  I spent some time digging out trenches under the fence and on Friday night I went out to try and lay the forms to finish it off.  The only problem is, I have NO IDEA what I'm doing.  I know nothing about concrete work, but went out to do it anyway.  I pulled out the drill, a box of screws, stakes, 2x4s, and a hammer to head off to work.  In an hour and half, I had been able to screw boards to three stakes.  I stripped a drill bit, stripped pretty much every screw, and I spent a half hour on a single screw.  I felt so overwhelmed and discouraged I held back tears and prayed for help.

Shortly after I'd given up, I saw a truck for junk metal in front of a near neighbor's house and ran over to have them pick up some stuff I'd been meaning to call about for a long time.  They drove over to the house and Ryan Linford, my neighbor, came by to see what I was getting rid of and chat for a second.  I don't know Ryan very well, but we're cordial and say "hi."  He asked me what I was doing - referring to the wood in the front yard - and I explained the best I could about my attempts.  He offered to help and I jumped at the offer.  Unfortunately it was about 9:30pm and not the time to work on a project of this size.  I knew he was a good guy, but figured I'd missed my window of opportunity.

The next afternoon, Ryan came and knocked on my door and asked if I wanted help putting in the forms for the retaining wall.  I practically yelled, Yes!" and ran upstairs to change.  The first thing he asked me about were the grade and scale.  While I'm an English teacher, those words were not in my vocabulary and I knew I really was clueless about this project.  We worked on those forms for about 4-5 hours, digging out grass, ripping out what I had already done, and starting from scratch.

I don't know how many people would sacrifice an entire Saturday afternoon to do hard labor for someone, without anything in return.  I know that he was heaven-sent and I couldn't have done that project without him.  I'm so grateful for angels among us.