Warm Winter Wonder

I know the November public thank-a-thon is over, but I have to publicly state something I’m thankful for: heat.

By heat, I mean central heating in my house. What a fabulous invention! I love it so much that I find myself rejoicing in it every day, especially after going without it for so long. It’s not like I live in some backwoods cabin and have been lighting a fire in my wood stove up to now, although that would’ve been warmer than we were feeling here for the past several years. And I know, I know, I can’t elicit ANY sympathy whatsoever from anyone who lives in a climate that’s actually cold while I live in relatively balmy Arizona, so I’m not actually begging for that here.

The thing is, since about 2003, our heater has been on the fritz. It worked fine the first two winters in this house, and then it started to work intermittently, as if it had some royal attitude and would only deign to warm us when it felt like it. I’d turn on the heat, and it would comply for a day or two, and then not, and then it might, and so on. By 2005, it was more not heating than heating. I called a guy, Fred, to come fix it. He tried. It still didn’t work. But hey, winter’s only 12 weeks long. We could tough it out.

Then in the winter of 2007, it was just out. That winter I had a newborn and thought she’d suffer if I didn’t get it working, so I called another repairman. It didn’t fix it.

We bought space heaters. My oldest son took up what we call “heater worship,” where he’d sit directly in front of the space heater with a blanket and soak up all the warm air for as many hours of the day as he was home. I would rack my brain thinking of things to bake just so I could have the oven on. Sometimes I’d just turn on the oven and open the door and then we’d huddle in the kitchen.

But it didn’t keep us warm. We had a couple of really cold snaps. In 2011, it got cold enough that it froze all the pipes in the church (pipes were in the ceiling) and flooded the place, and we had to make a 15 minute drive and attend church at 3:00 in the afternoon for six months while it got repaired. So, yeah, it’s Arizona, but there are times when I don’t care if it’s not Montana’s 50 below–it’s 5 degrees, and 5 degrees is still cold. Especially without heat.

So after a two-year(!) round of failures calling one repairman after another (who didn’t show up, or didn’t fix it when they did show up, or fixed it wrong), having my husband change out the thermostat twice, dreading another year of space heater worship, at last, I finally called the right person. That was at 8:00 a.m. on a Wednesday. By 9:30 a.m. he’d come over and diagnosed it, ordered the part. By 10:40 a.m. warm, comforting air was flowing down on me. My house was warm!

This morning I got up early and sat by the Christmas tree to read the scriptures (my favorite thing of the season). I couldn’t see my breath. It was a beautiful thing.

I wish you all beautiful things this Christmas, including warm hearts. And warm homes.