The Tarp

Back in August of last year, I wrote a devotional about our smelly pool. I won’t go back through all the details, but when I took down the pool, the grass underneath the pool had a terrible smell. This was the third summer that we had put the pool up, but this was the first time that it had resulted in this smell. We were able to get it mostly cleaned up and stored away, but we never figured out what caused it.
Well, the time came for us to put it up again last week. As we pulled it out into the backyard, there was just enough of the lingering smell to give us PTSD from the previous summer.  But this year was going to be different. We tried to avoid any of the problems that could have potentially caused the smell. I went and bought a tarp to set it up on, we picked a slightly different spot, made sure the ground was dry…so far so good. It was a little later in the evening when we finished setting it up, but I decided to go ahead and start filling it up. I let the water run for an hour or two but turned it off before bed. I didn’t want to risk an overflow.
The next morning, when I let the dogs out, I noticed some water on the tarp around the bottom of the pool. I didn’t remember getting any water on the tarp when I started filling up the pool, but as I walked around it, it was clear that we had a leak. It wasn’t a ton of water. It wasn’t like the pool had completely drained. There was maybe only 2 gallons of water on the tarp. But it was enough to know that we had a problem. And the realization of that problem was also a realization of our problem from last summer. We had a leak and didn’t know it.
Because we didn’t use a tarp last year, the water was simply leaking into the ground under the pool and never airing out. So the dampness of the ground and grass trapped under the pool created the terrible smell. Amazing how such a small leak could create such an awful smell. It was so small that it wasn’t even noticeable. If we noticed that the water level inside the pool dropped, it was easily attributed to the kids simply splashing water out. The tarp made all the difference this year.
We need other people in our lives to act as our “spiritual tarp”. We need to allow other people to know us well enough to notice things in our lives that could be detrimental to us. Hebrews 3:12–13 tells us to, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Sometimes knowingly, and sometimes unknowingly, we can develop cracks or holes in our character, our routines, our actions, our thoughts, our relationships, our decisions. They begin small but they can create large problems if left unchecked and uncorrected. Our “heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9), so it can be difficult or impossible to notice, much less correct, these problems in our lives on our own. We need the help of the Holy Spirit and church members who care about us to exhort, rebuke, correct and love us. And we should want to do the same for others.

Lord, help us to be humble and vulnerable enough to allow you to use others to help us live lives that glorify you. Help us not to hide our sin and struggles but to bring them into the light.

-Kendall Harris