Our coldest night and no fire in the wood stove... - 04:26, Monday, February 5, 2007 |
| So here I sit at 4:30 a.m. My dh is safely off to work at the post office. He's a mail carrier who occasionally gets a few clerking hours. I made him breakfast to take with him because of our fireplace incident last night. We returned from our youth group Super Bowl party early (I'm one of the youth leaders), since I asked my dh to go along and he had an early start at work this morning. We were prepping for bed (chasing the grandson and getting him dressed for bed) when we noticed an odd smell. Now I was changing the baby so I started doing the nana/mommy sniff....then the smoke detector went off. The whole main living areas were filled with smoke. We frantically searched for a source of the smoke, trading off who had the baby to keep him out of the room. We quickly decided it was somehow coming from the fireplace. I bundled up the baby and we sat on the front porch under blankets while my dh searched more intently. Both of us had tried to see if there was smoke or flames coming out of the chimney. Finally, he was able to detect normal smoke. We hadn't determined the exact cause of the smoke because the fire in the stove was too hot to put out. My dh turned the fan on the stove down and he opened windows and doors to clear out the house. I sat swinging with the baby until he was nearly asleep, which was something for a nearly 2 yr old in the midst of a routine interruption and the excitement of running around throughout the house. My dh said the house was clear of smoke so we came in to go to bed after telling our ds not to stoke the fire. The baby was much too enthusiastic about bed time when we laid down. The smell still lingered and he decided to play 'tent' with the covers. We all got settled by about 11:30 p.m., leaving my dh just 4 1/2 hours of sleep before getting up for work. At 12:30 a.m. the smoke detector again goes off (by this time the baby was safely asleep in his bed at the back of the house). My dh and ds get up and again find the smoke must be coming from the wood stove. Nothing is actually flaming, so after helping clear out a bit of the smoke, everyone was back to bed. The alarm went off at the disgustingly early hour of 3:45 a.m., with no further incidents of smoke since the fire had burned itself out in the stove. We have a back up heating system - natural gas piped into the property. We are not one of the properties blessed with our own mineral rights. Last winter we had over $1200 in gas heating bills by mid-February and have decided to rely almost exclusively on our wood stove. It's an old 'Black Bart' cast iron insert with a great blower that distributes the heat throughout the house (a 1300 sq.ft. ranch). When my dh gets home (around 1 p.m.) he is going to pull the stove out and check the whole thing to determine what caused that massive amount of smoke. As I sat on the swing last night, snuggling my grandson close and listening to traffic go by the house, I did the only thing one can do if one thinks the house may be on fire. I started thinking of possibilities for alternate living quarters. I thought of the 2 extra bedrooms my parents have and the 2 extra bedrooms my m-i-l has. I realized amidst the fear that naturally came over me at the thought of losing my home that God has always provided us with a safe place to live and that he has never, ever failed to take care of our family. After 22 years of moving all over the country and once outside the country with the USAF, I have the proof that He will always take care of us because he has always done so. Those years and the 4 1/2 years since my dh retired contain many touchstone times with evidence of God's tender loving care. Sleep was not peaceful, our house is smelly, but we are warm and safe. We have no need to fear what may come because Jesus told us: "Therefore don't worry about your life...for your heavenly Father knows you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all those things shall be added to you." Matthew 6:25-33 (emphasis mine). |
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Beautiful... - 08:19, Wednesday, February 7, 2007
I really love your conclusion to the whole ordeal...it shows "real life" faith, something that is sometimes almost nonexistant in this day and age.Like you, we have natural gas and a really nice gas furnace but we don't use it because the cost is OUTRAGEOUS. We plan on getting a wood stove in the future...for now we use 2 Kerosene heaters (1 upstairs and 1 downstairs) and a few well-placed electric space heaters.
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