Learning perseverance
January 30, 2025By Jeff Becraft
Well… I finally figured out what DIY stands for – Destroy It Yourself.
I have said before that someday I’m going to start my own YouTube channel and it’s going to be called: The way it really is. So, instead of seeing somebody fix something in 90 seconds, you’re going to see the multi-hour operation that actually takes place.
Last weekend, I decided I was going to fix one of our toilets. The handle wasn’t working right and there were some other parts that weren’t working real smoothly. So, I decided I’m going to replace the guts of this toilet.
Now, if I were a better man, I would have just replaced the handle and the flap, and I would have been much better off. But since I’m not, I decided I was going to replace all the guts.
This should have been like a 25-minute operation. Now, the manufacturer of the kit to replace the innards of this toilet had a video. Good for them. I watched that video and it looked simple enough. I should have been forewarned when I saw how easy it looked.
So, I went in to take action on our own toilet. Now, there were a lot of differences between real life and what was going on in that video. In the video, that was a brand new toilet; it wasn’t 30 years old. And when the woman who was leading the video (fingernail polish, gentle and poised voice, and all) unscrewed the giant ring nut at the base of the tank, I can tell you right now that that thing was not screwed on there very tight, and second, it had not been fused onto that tank after being there for 30 years. I couldn’t even make the thing budge… (even with sound effects and grunting and groaning and loudly complaining about the thing).
I had to go to my toolbox, get out an oil filter wrench that I use on the car, and thankfully, it was big enough to lock the teeth around that ring nut, and I was able to loosen it.
But that was just a minuscule part of the problems I would run into. The washers for the bolts were disintegrating at the base of the tank. Both of our toilets are two-piece toilets, and as mentioned, are both 30 years old.
I decided to change out the washers and bolts…and that is where the problems really began. I wasn’t planning on switching out the gasket between the tank and the base. (I had done this on the other toilet years ago and it took a week and several plumbing stores and multiple gaskets… none of which worked… and finally siliconing the tank to the base before it finally worked.) I am trying to get this bolt off. I undo the wing nut. When I do that, it breaks the seal of the gasket between the tank and the base. I was like, “Oh, no… this is not territory I wanted to get into here.” It was too late now; it was both feet in.
I undid the wing nut on both bolts on both sides of the tank. Still, I couldn’t get it off, and I couldn’t figure out why. The lady in the video (whom I kept going back to to review notes and the task at hand) didn’t have this problem. Also, her toilet was not jammed in between a tub and a sink in a small bathroom. Just a minor detail I thought I would mention…
My mental status was going downhill fast.
I finally got dressed for cold weather and started heading outside. My wife asks me, “Where are you going?” I disgruntledly replied, “I’m going out to chop some wood. I have to regain my sanity here.” I had now been working on this toilet for several hours. I go out, chop some wood, come back in, and I discovered there’s a second wing nut under these bolts. Where in the world did that boy come from? So, I got that off, got everything back on, reconnected everything, and nothing leaked!… almost.
I discovered that the water line was leaking.
I am now openly and verbally talking to myself, the toilet, and the world, and letting everyone know that I am not happy.
It is now after dinner time, so I leave in the dark to go to one of the big box hardware stores. I get to the parking lot. Normally, I carry a cup of water around with me but since this was going to be a quick trip (who was I kidding?), I didn’t bring one with me. But I always have an insulated backpack with me that has all kinds of diabetic supplies in it (in case my sugar level drops really low) and I usually have a bottle of water in there. I decided I wanted to have a quick drink of water before going in. I reach in and grab a plastic, partially-filled water bottle. It crinkles like a water bottle and everything. Now, it is totally dark at this point in my car. I take a big swig out of the bottle… and I didn’t get the first drop of water. What I got was a big mouthful of flavored coffee creamer.
Now, you may be wondering why am I carrying around coffee creamer in an old water bottle to go to the hardware store? Well, if you remember from any other emails you may have read, I am not a real coffee drinker. I drink flavored creamer with coffee. When we had gone to New Jersey for Christmas, everyone else are real coffee drinkers. So, I packed my own flavored coffee creamer in an empty water bottle, and that’s what I took up there. This was the leftover of that. When I had reached into the fridge to grab a bottle of water, I didn’t realize this was the bottle I had grabbed. (You have to remember that I was not in the best frame of mind when I was grabbing things out of the refrigerator.)
So, I got a big mouthful of coffee creamer.
I get out of the car. I walk past this guy who is out standing by his car in the parking lot. He says “hi” and I kind of mumble something because I can’t open my mouth. (Imagine what he would be thinking if I opened my mouth and all this white stuff started drooling out? He would probably be calling animal control and reporting a rabid creature or something.) I go to the island where the tree is growing and spit everything out. This poor guy standing by his car… he probably thinks I’m over there yanging in the grass by the tree.
I go back to the car. I do not have any water bottles in my backpack. So, I have to grab a bottle of soda. I go back to the tree, rinse out my mouth from this flavored coffee creamer with soda (which is actually worse than it sounds) and spit it out again… all of which looked pretty gnarly. Poor dude in the parking lot is probably thinking, “Man, that guy is really having a rough night.” If he only knew…
Finally, I go in, get a new water line, go back to the house, reconnect it, and… it worked.
This entire operation (including the meltdown and going out and whacking tree stumps) took about nine hours. To say that I was in a bad mood would be a gross understatement… but it did get done.
The next day I had another project I needed to work on. As usual, my 90-second, fix-everything friends are all in hiding, and things start to go sideways. On this day, however, I noticed that when things weren’t going quite right, I had a lot more patience. It wasn’t that big of a deal to me. Why? Because the day before had been a catastrophe. I had already walked through those waters.
There are times in our lives where things do not work out very well. It can be extremely aggravating and extremely frustrating.
And what does that produce in us? If we will accept it, it produces perseverance. And so the next day when I hit something that wasn’t going the way it was supposed to, I had a much better attitude… because I had already been through the nine hours of wrestling with a toilet.
As we face things in a day-to-day basis, and sometimes things aren’t going right and things are not working the way they’re supposed to work, take a moment to reflect that this is a great opportunity to develop some perseverance.
Either that… or go outside and chop down a tree.
Jeff Becraft is the Director of Our Place of Hope and the Director Emeritus for Youth Corps and has dedicated much of his life to helping shift the vision of people’s lives. Our Place of Hope is a paradigm shift for people living with mental illness that encourages them to regain meaning, purpose, and hope for their lives. You can connect with Jeff at [email protected].