The first house Cathy and I ever bought was a 910-square-foot job on blocks in Southern Louisiana. I honestly believe the Lord wanted me to buy this home to show me something. I remember when I walked through it for the first time—I put my hand on the doorknob, and about thirty-five roaches came out of nowhere. Roaches were all over my hand!

There must have been some dirty people living in that place before us. It was Roach City, USA. You could hear those roaches going, Hey, food! I had to spray that house every day for two weeks before we moved in-walls, floors and everything. There was no furniture in it, and before we put our furniture in, it was bare enough to see those dead roaches all over the place. They died, it seemed, by the millions. We got them all out though.

Now, in Southern Louisiana it doesn’t get cold. It may freeze a little in the winter but not very often. So when the owner told me I might want to insulate the pipes before I bought that house, I kind of laughed.

“Insulate the pipes?” I asked. “I don’t need to insulate pipes in Southern Louisiana!”

You have to understand—I am not a mechanical person. I don’t fix things. Cathy is the fixer of all things in our family. If something’s wrong with my Harley, for example, I send it to Cathy. Cathy can fix a Harley motorcycle. She likes getting into that stuff, and I like watching her. She does a good job.

Well, I never did insulate those pipes, and sure enough, a cold snap set in. They told us to run the water so the pipes wouldn’t freeze, but we forgot to do it. You see, this was the first home we’d ever owned in our lives.

The morning after the freeze, we got up, turned on the water, and nothing came out. So I called my dad and told him what had happened. He said, “Your pipes froze, boy. But they may not have busted.”

“Well, what is this sound?” I asked, “this whoooooooohhhhh under my house?”

“They busted,” he said.

“Ah, Dad, can you come help me?” I asked.

“No, I can’t do it today, son,” he told me.

“Dad,” I said, “I’ve never fixed a busted pipe in my life. I don’t know how to do that.”

“Well, just heal up the crack,” he explained. “Go get a joint of pipe, and find out what’s busted. Cut the water off.”

“Where at?” I asked.

“Usually it’s in the front of your house by the street. It’s called the main,” he said. “Sometimes they’ve got valves. In that case, you don’t have to go to the main valve. You may have a valve somewhere in your house, and you can cut that off and then fix it.”

“Daddy,” I said, “it’s 30 degrees.”

“Welcome to the world,” he said.

“Daddy, I might have to crawl underneath the house. There’s water and mud under there.”

You’d be surprised at what else was under that house. But I had to go, so I put on my coveralls. I looked under there and saw a lake of water. I knew right then and there that I had to drag my body through that water and mud. And it was 30 degrees!

“Cathy!” I called.

“You’re the man of the house!” She answered, knowing what I was going to ask her.

I looked around and finally found a valve to turn off the water. Then I remembered what Dad had said about a split pipe. So I looked it over, and sure enough, man, there was a split. The next thing I did was go to the store, where I bought the wrong-sized pipe. They sold me the wrong size, wouldn’t you know it?

I got back under that house and unwittingly dragged myself through some broken glass, cutting myself in the process. And there were spiders everywhere saying, “Hi! Hello!” I needed help, so I called for backup.

“Cathy, Cathy!” I yelled.

“What?”

“I need some help.”

“Oh, I can’t come underneath that house,” she told me. “There are spiders under there.”

“There were forty-seven million roaches in it when we bought it,” I yelled.

“They just moved downstairs.”

“I can’t go under there,” she said.

“Why not?”

“It’s dirty.”

“So?”

“I can’t do that,” she said. “But I will help you.”

“All right,” I said. I was trying to back this piece of pipe out, and I was getting mad. I was busting my knuckles. It was cold. Even my blood was hurting. I started using words nobody had ever heard before: “Kew! Kou! Jes! Dp tht! Nom!” I even reverted to my Catholic days, “Jesus, Mary, Joseph! Jesus, Mary, Joseph! God!”

I was a preacher, you know. But I was getting madder and madder because I couldn’t get the pipe to work. I was testing out different ways to get it to work, but it wasn’t happening. I saw two lines, but I couldn’t figure out which was which. Is this the cold line or the hot line? I thought to myself. I looked for the difference between the two lines, but I had a hard time finding it.

“I ain’t stupid,” I said, talking out loud to myself. “Okay, that’s where the hot water is. Okay, that’s the cold.” I was talking my way through it.

“Cathy! There’s a…there’s a knob-there are two knobs! One on the left, one on the right.”

Now, I was hollering this through the floor. I was underneath that floor layer, and from under there I yelled, “Don’t touch the left knob! That’s the hot water.”

“Okay.”

“Turn on the right knob,” I yelled.

“Why?”

“Well, because the cold line’s fixed. I can cut it off, but the hot line’s busted and open now.”

“Okay.”

So what does she do? She turns on the left knob! Wheeeeesh! hot water comes pouring out. I was scalded! “Ah! Da! Turn it off! TURN IT OFF!”

“What? WHAT?”

“TURN IT OFF! I am being burned!” I was so mad that I had a fit of carnality.
The Lord had to tell me, Jesse! Control yourself.

I said, “You’re not the one, Lord, lying on your back in this mud with a crazy woman using hot water to try to kill You!”

“Cathy! CATHY! CATHY!” I hollered.

Finally, she said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I turned the wrong knob.”

I was lying in hot water. I’m serious. It was all over me, and I was burned. There were spiders looking at me, and my back was cut.

I said, “Cathy! Come here.”

She came out, and I saw her little head looking under the house. “Jesse!” she said, “don’t move.”

I was thinking, Oh no, there’s a snake here. “What’s the problem?”

“Don’t move!”

I could hardly move anyway! And all the while I was under there, I kept smelling something terrible.

She said, “Don’t move. There’s a dead cat by your head.”

I leaned over, and sure enough, there was a cat with his brain hanging out right there. I went, “Ahhhhhhhh, man! Grab it!”

“I don’t touch dead cats,” she told me.

I had a fit, I was so mad.

“CATHY! Grab that cat!” I yelled.

“I am not touching it.”

“Yes, you are!”

“I am not touching that cat.”

So I started to grab that cat with a stick, and all of a sudden I went, “Ahhhhhhh!” Something had stuck me in the back.

“What is that!” I shouted as I pulled what felt like a thorn out of my back.
“What is this?”

“Oh,” she said, “I threw some cactus underneath the house.”

Glass! Spiders! Scalding water! A dead cat with brains hanging out! And now a cactus! I had another fit of carnality.

“I don’t care about this busted pipe anymore,” I said. I looked at the cut glass, cactus, guts and everything else lying around me. I had a dead cat in one hand and in the other a wrench that I was about to hit something with. I came flying out from under that house! All I can say is, thank God my next-door neighbor showed up just then.

“How are you doing, preacher?” he asked.

I went, “Huh?”

He looked at me and said, “You know, I wouldn’t touch that dead cat if I were you. What’s the problem?”

I had been witnessing to this man, and I didn’t want him to see me like this.

He said, “Go ahead and cuss if you want to. I won’t tell nobody.”

Every time you have a fit of carnality, you can take it to the bank that there’s going to be somebody who will see you do it. He looked at me and said, “Your wife won’t help you, huh?”

“How’d you know that?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “I busted a pipe earlier this morning, and I tried to get my wife to help. She wouldn’t help me either. You want me to give you a hand?”

“Yeah, both of them,” I said.

Well, we finally got that thing fixed, but it took both of us to do it.

But it was amazing. I was about ready to lose it, and here was a man whom I had been witnessing to, a man whom I’d been telling, “Jesus is the greatest thing in the world. Give your problems to Jesus. He can handle anything.”

Now, I was acting like Jesus could handle anything – except for a broken pipe, a dead cat and an uncooperative wife. That’s what it looked like. My actions were witnessing to him more than my words. I was speaking to him by my fits of carnality-my yelling and screaming and raging.

Let me tell you something. People are going to watch what you do. They won’t listen to what you say as much as they will watch what you do. You could be the greatest preacher in the world, but if you go home and yell at your wife and have fits of carnality, that’s going to ruin your witness. Your actions are your witness too. That’s why it’s important to watch not only what you say, but watch what you do.

Source: Jambalaya for the Soul by Jesse Duplantis
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers