At Least It Isn't Concrete

At Least It Isn’t Concrete!

Debra Taylor 2011

            This last week great progress had been made on the new MTC entrance driveway. We have been looking forward to its completion.

The retaining walls, side walk, and planter boxes had been poured and finished; including the glazing. It was coming right along! The road base was prepared with rebar and solidly leveled, rolled, and packed. The heavy rains had come and gone a couple of times, but finally the driveway was ready for the finish concrete. Half of the driveway was poured, smoothed, and the men worked all night to etch lines in the concrete to give traction to the surface when it would become wet. It looked great!

The next morning as I went to gym I was shocked to see the beautiful driveway broken up into a million pieces of rubble.

“My word, what happened?”

 I was informed that the concrete mix was substandard and had not passed the slump test, and would crack.  I was sick!

I felt so bad for the work men and the hours they had labored.

This made me think of the many times I had returned papers to my students for redo and they had come to me complaining. I would simply reply, “At least it isn’t in concrete!" I really never thought that I would see concrete laid and broken up in 24 hours.

I thought of how hard the concrete was; how much labor it had taken to break it up, not counting hauling it away. And then how much easier it was to break up and remove before it completely cured.

So like each of us when we make mistakes and some are more serious than others. The process of redoing and repenting is the same. We must take responsibility, make corrections and start over. It is easier, always easier, when time has not solidified our mistakes and when we repent quickly. Those around us are more empathetic, supportive, and we feel a sense of urgency for a chance to try again. When we do this we can learn and celebrate rather than live in a state of dread of later consequences.

I used to grieve more about the wasted paper and broken up concrete than to think of the opportunity of redoing. Since we can recycle paper into paper and concrete into aggregate, then the blessing of repenting makes the effort worth the work. So with a little bit of grinding and crushing aren’t we all a little bit recycled each day?  Hopefully we can say about ourselves, “At Least It Isn’t Concrete!”