What a week. What a weekend. Talk about superhero husband. He continues to amaze me. I'll explain....For the whole time we've lived here - over 10 years, we've been on oil as a source of fuel. This is just plain expensive. The numbers, if I dared to print them out, to heat our house, would blow you out of the water - we could heat all of Antarctica. However, switching to gas would also blow your mind, so alas, year after year, we swallowed the pain, and paid the bill, barely, and pressed on. Then, last year, our oil tank was condemned. The oil company took a look at the tank and it had some rust on the bottom and they said, no more. We won't fill it. So we were left with a choice - replace the oil tank with a very expensive new one or switch to gas, also very expensive. For the remainder of the heating season and up until recently, we had to top up the tank on our own with diesel from the gas station - also a very expensive makeshift option which meant the older boys running off to the gas station all the time, then putting it in in the dead of winter with howling winds, then RM would have to go downstairs and restart the furnace, which is also no fun, nearly every single time - obviously not sustainable and miserable for everyone. How I prayed.
Enter in the new neighbour, R.
R works for the gas company and as a young guy with lots of energy and great ideas and a low tolerance for paying oil bills, he rallied the neighbours nearest to him and easily convinced all of us to chip in a manageable amount to put in a gas line all the way up the street. The gas line went in a few weeks ago, the beginning of turning our heating life around. Then this past weekend, our new furnace went in - glory to God! With a new thermostat! Why is that exciting?! Because even that stopped working - I swear - our whole house should be condemned. But we couldn't put in a new thermostat knowing we were about to get one, so we had to wait and manually turn the heat on and off each time by connecting wires, oh my goodness. It was a joke.
After the guys were here installing the furnace and the heat turned on ALL BY ITSELF without any boys putting in fuel and without anyone touching the wires together at the thermostat, we all just sat around and said, "Listen to the vents! They're working! It's a whole new house! The air feels new! Warmer! Cleaner!" It was pretty sad how excited we were about the heat in our house. But this is the deal and this is why I am sure we had to go through that - so we will NEVER take heat for granted ever. I also always tell the kids that I'm sorry they had to go through that difficult season of being cold, delivering gas (which they did time after time without EVER complaining - they are saints, I swear) and going without heat for a few hours if we ran out of diesel fuel (boo hoo - we all survived a few hours here and there), BUT God allowed it in our lives and this is why - so they'll all have stories and memories to tell their kids. They'll never grow up and not realize where their heat comes from - they know! They'll be sitting with their new wife or husband and the heat will come on and they'll say, "Look, honey, the furnace works! I LOVE our new thermostat!" It'll be so funny - they're spouse will say, "Uh, yeah, of course, what's the big deal - everyone has heat and a thermostat...." and that's when my kids will tell their super exciting story of the day they got a new furnace and how they had to go without for a few months.....a great story!
But why is RM the hero? Because as usual, it takes a lot of coordination. Gas men don't just show up. It's a lot of work to get all that together and for ONCE he didn't have to be the one installing it, praise God. But, he still got stuck doing work. The whole time the gas guys were here, he was under not one car, but two! Yes, our used car lot of cars is slowly getting fixed....could it be that the ruins are being rebuilt? I pray.
So he fixed my daughter's car - wow, that was a HUGE deal and saved her thousands - and the next day, he literally fixed the brakes on the truck - saving us hundreds. I don't know how he does it, honestly.
The fix on my daughter's car was only temporary, however - another light turned up right away on her car, this time my husband had run out of time. He actually has to do his job! So ironically we had to take it in to a mechanic for that light, but it'll save time and money in the long run, but again, a lot of know-how and coordination to get even that pulled together. Even last week, when the sump pump failed, he knew what to do and had it fixed ASAP. Which, when you look back, is awesome timing. We didn't know the whole gas line/furnace event was going to happen this past weekend. It's fantastic that the sump pump failed when it did. I'm so glad that was taken care of and that there was no flood when the gas guys came.
I wish I had all that money that we spent on the furnace, gas line, sump pump, brakes, and car alternator to do something that would make my house a little more aesthetically pleasing as no one is going to ever comment on how amazing our gas line and new furnace is YET these are the foundational, essential things that had to be fixed and so I'm grateful that we are rebuilding from the inside out. To go ahead and do superficial fixing would just be dumb and I know that God knows where our house is sick and He is literally forcing us to fix things in His timing, so I'm actually quite grateful for the order it is happening. On the list of foundational, not aesthetically pleasing list, are things that again, no one will say, "Wow!" to, such as our roof and eavestroughs, but if we don't fix those soon, our house is going to be rotten as there are leaks affecting all parts of the house, but I'm ok with getting things like that done as they'll save our house in the long run.
Through it all, I'm grateful to God for a husband who knows what to do, how to coordinate it all, and is willing to work in really unforgiving cold, under cars while he aches, in order to get his children in vehicles driving to where they need to go. As in social media where you click on your status, mine would be "grateful".
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