get out the steel wool — it’s 59 degrees

{photo – hannah nicole}

That’s what we woke up to this morning.  Inside our home.  Outside? It was a balmy -6degrees making the 59 feel like a faux heatwave. Yet, judging from the little ones wrapped in blankets and wandering around complaining about the cold, you’d know we weren’t very comfortable.

The furnace wasn’t working. 

And we were cold.

Immediately I began praying.  We didn’t have the budget room to fix the furnace — life was complicated and busy — and we were cold.

57 degrees.

It was dropping.  The windows were starting to get ice on them.  I ran into the garage and found a space heater from my hubby’s days in construction.  My little blanket wrapped babes gathered around the heater as if it were a glorious roaring fire from days long past.

We worked quickly downstairs in our utility room. Phone calls made. More prayers. More distracting myself trying to get all those loads of laundry folded in case a repair man came — even though I was praying so hard that one wouldn’t come. Socks, and t-shirts, jeans, and sweaters. The piles became higher as my worry tried to creep in.

55 degrees.

Now it almost seemed imminent – a repair man would need to be called. We called a friend — who owned a hvac company — and he told us to clean a sensor.  Fear crept in as I saw the bolts being unscrewed. Panel after panel coming down each with bold warnings about not messing around with the furnace. I heard the electric screwdriver whizzing and felt my heart racing.

I needed faith.  I needed to trust that my husband would be safe. Out came the steel wool.  Scrub, scrape, scrub.  More prayers. And we’d wait. Again. And again. We’d start it up, and hear it stop. More scrubbing and scraping.  More prayers from me as the piles of folded laundry grew higher.

Then we heard it. The furnace kicked in. And stayed on.

62 degrees.

The temp was going up. The little ones huddled around the once-intriguing and warming space heater gradually dispersed throughout the home. Life began to regain its normal rhythm.

I had forgotten to be grateful for heat.

It wasn’t till it was gone that I realized just how thankful I am for that two inch sensor plate in our furnace.  It didn’t look that dirty — it just looked like a layer of white dust was resting on it. Yet, it took minutes and minutes of firm scrubbing and scraping to remove the film that triggered our furnace to shut off.

Isn’t that like life? We get so wrapped up in our agendas and start operating out of ourselves that we forget to clean our sensor plates — instead of resting and relying on God.  It becomes this time of self – until we burn out. And then we remember.

68 degrees.

The sun is pouring in — the house is warm.  The boys are running around without shirts pretending to be on an expedition.  The windows are clear, and the laundry that was folded out of desperation is all put away.  But, I don’t forget. It could be so different now – we could have had to pay hundreds of dollars. Our house could still be cold. In the end we just needed to take care of that sensor.

Just like my heart.

Thanks, Lord, for reminding me to look at my heart and pulling out the steel wool — the truth in you — to clean and scrape it and remove the grime so that it could be buffed clean of earthly lies and once again focused on you.

Warm.