Is it normal for most couples to have spur-of-the-moment roofing projects?
Background: I’ve been doing roofing (among other things) with Habitat for Humanity and on mission trips since I was maybe 12. On the summer mission trip to West Virginia this summer, Teresa and I were on the team that took 3 roofs off of one house and put 2 back. Of the 5 people who worked up there, 4 of us put a leg through the roof. Here’s a picture of that roof:

Also, we’d just been down to Louisa County a couple of weeks ago to build a pen for her parent’s goats, and we had a plague of poison ivy that we passed back and forth for a week afterwards.
Yesterday, we were walking around downtown Harrisonburg, and got a call from Teresa’s dad. We are storing some of our stuff in an old shed out back of their house built by her brother, Stephen, and the roof was, well, less than dry. Stephen was coming to repair the roof, and we came down to help as we had offered to do.
2 hours later, we were in Louisa County loading up tools for the afternoon. The main task was to re-tape the joints and paint over with a rubberized sealant. Teresa’s task was to hack away at the vines and undergrowth that were attacking the bottom and walls of the shed. After the taping, we started the painting. Stephen went to the other side to look for nails that needed to be hammered down, and I soon heard both crashing and yelling. Stephen’s feet had disappeared through a plastic skylight, and he was hanging from the rafters by his elbows. I called to the people on the ground to open the door, but the key was at the house. Teresa’s dad slipped and rolled in the brush on the way to the tractor, and she passed him to sprint to the house.
When I got over to Stephen, he had just realized that his feet could reach a nearby cabinet and after resting from the shock, began to let himself down to the floor. I was able to reassure the others as he scrambled to the door, which could be unlocked from the inside. Stephen was lying in the grass by the time Teresa ran back with the key. He was scraped and sore, but the Lord had seen fit to have the cabinet just below his feet and save him from another six feet of gravity’s pull. He returned with his mother and 3-yr-old son to be patched up, and they picked flowers to ease the shock when they told Stephen’s wife. Teresa mounted the ladder to watch over me as I continued to patch the roof. Within an hour, I’d nearly completed painting the seams, and went back to patch the nail holes. Now there was a third task of covering the gaping hole once T’s dad got back from Lowe’s with the new materials.
A half-tube of tar, a dozen nails, and 2 sheets of metal later, the hole was patched and I could return to finish the painting. I watched the sun set over the ridge as I turned to descend the ladder for a delicious meal served by Teresa’s mom.
We all had stories to share at the table, and we all gave thanks for the day and the Lord’s protection from grave injury.
In all the excitement, I forgot to take pictures of the roof, but here’s a picture of an 8-inch praying mantis we found among the vines. Maybe he was praying for Stephen?
