Dear Ones.
This has been a very interesting and blessed week.
Let me preface this story with some background information. After my back surgery in May, I found out that my niece (who I love dearly) was getting married in Ohio in June. I did not want to miss that wedding for anything. I found out that a new airline out of Columbus, Ohio has cheap flights to Richmond. I secretly booked a round trip and made reservations for the car rental and hotel. It is a two-hour drive from Columbus to the small town where my sister lives. I did it secretly because I knew that my husband or children would try to stop me. The doctor had ordered me to lie down flat for 15 minutes every hour. I reasoned that if I let go of my pride a little I could achieve that and still make the trip. And I did achieve the trip. I arranged to be taken to the airplane and picked up at the airplane by wheel chair. I had plenty of codeine, but I was in less pain than I was before the surgery. I lay down on the airport floor before boarding airplane. I explained to those sitting near me that I had had back surgery and was supposed to rest for 15 minutes. No one even raised an eyebrow, and one woman’s grandchildren offered to go to the kiosks and get me a drink and fruit. Two different people said they also had back surgery in the past and understood. Fortunately the airport had just put in new carpet. The hardest part was sitting in the airplane’s seat for the trip. The pillow I brought helped that. I was in Ohio a little over a week. The night before I returned, I stayed at a hotel on the Concourse. I had to get up at 4AM because my plane left at 6AM. I took a taxi from the Richmond airport to my house in Chester. I was exhausted when I walked in the door. I went straight to bed. When I got up hours later, I realized that the little black box that I carried my jewelry in was missing.
It had probably been a foolish mistake to take all of my favorite pieces of jewelry to Ohio. Every piece of fine jewelry that I owned was in that box. Many of them had sentimental value, as Tim had bought them to celebrate some special occasion. Yes, I wore all of them on one day or the other, but there was more than $2,000 worth of jewelry in that box and it represented 25 years of married life to Tim. You can imagine, I tore up the house looking for them. I went through all of the luggage over and over again. I went through every pocket and shoe. I took everything out from under the bed and from the closet. Finally I came to the conclusion that I must have lost them or they were stolen. I called the cab company, the hotels, the car rental company, the airlines…nothing. To be truthful I couldn’t remember positively when I had seen the box last. I thought that I had it before I went to sleep, but I was so tired and so drugged by then that I couldn’t say what was memory and what was dream. I was devastated at the loss. I beat myself up mentally for taking my good pieces with me in the first place. What was I thinking? I prayed for whoever might have the jewelry now, that somehow it might bless them in some special way and perhaps bring them to Christ. I struggled with and worked on forgiving myself and perhaps the someone who had stolen them. It was June 14th when I came home and it has taken me all of this time to stop crying about it. I didn’t want Tim to buy me another piece of fine jewelry every again. I told him, “Just costume from now on. I don’t want to lose anything nice ever again. I don’t deserve to have good stuff if I can’t take care of it.” Even with that loss, I counted it worth the cost to see my niece get married. I was glad I went.
I told Tim very specifically what I wanted for Christmas this year. Last year, knowing that I was prayer walking the churches in Richmond he got me two pair of padded socks that are for hiking. They wick away the water and keep one’s feet drier and warmer. I was surprised to find that they add support to my feet and help my back to hurt less. Two pairs are not enough! I was addicted! I wanted more of them. The cold really bothers me, and wearing heavy long underwear is uncomfortable. I wanted silk long underwear like skiers wear. The most expensive item that I wanted was an iPod and a set of speakers to go with it.
Some of you know that I have been interceding at the church every day for the last two weeks. I often like to play music when I pray. Sometimes it is music to move to and sometimes it is quite worship music. So I have been dragging my son’s “boom box” an extension cord and a small collection of CDs to the church. My car does not have a CD player either. I decided it was about time I joined the technology revolution and put my “tunes” on a playlist. I told the men folk in my house to have a meeting and decide what they wanted to get me so that I didn’t open a case of socks from each one of them.
I PLANNED to go to church Sunday and the Christmas Eve service. I still had not done my shopping, but I figured Tim and I would do that together. We usually do. The phone call Friday changed all of that. I called Karen to find out if she would have off Monday or Wednesday so that I could drive to Chester and bring her to Fairfax for Christmas. She didn’t. But, that is when she told me she has not had heat for over a week. Why didn’t she call me? Oh, she was waiting for me to call her about Christmas. (Wring her little neck.) She had been “bundling up a lot at night, but the cold woke her a few times.” It is two miles to my house in Chester. The heat is on. She has a key. Why didn’t she go there? “I didn’t think of that.” (Wring her neck again!) Tim and I threw our necessities in the car and left immediately, but not before putting air in the front tire. It was flat again. We talked on the way down of having a tire place near Karen’s trailer fix the tire.
The trip down was uneventful. We were nearly killed only two or three times. Those of you that drive I-95, know that this is a regular occurrence. We picked up Karen from work and her suitcase from the trailer and moved her into the guest bedroom. It was too late to do anything except cook supper and rest up for Saturday.
We had suspected that Karen was out of fuel oil but that wasn’t the problem. She was low, but not out. Nope, the problem was definitely in the furnace. Tim and I know how to fix a lot of things but a fuel oil furnace is not one of them. However, we knew we could not get a repairman out there immediately, or on Sunday, probably not on Christmas Eve or Christmas either. So after trying the few things that we did know, Tim went to the library to see what he could find out about taking a furnace apart and repairing it. He did get the thing apart and discovered that the igniter needed replacement or repair. I suggested we call, Leroy. He is a widower, of about 75 that lives one house down from my house. He knows everything about everything, and has one of everything lying in his back yard. In fact the county comes out and makes him clean it up ever so often. Sure enough he had an oil furnace in his back yard. “I just took it out of a trailer that I own and put in a heat pump.” Trouble was that after Tim got the igniter out of it, he found out that the igniter was a different size and Tim did not want to replace the whole furnace. A new igniter, Leroy told us would be over $120.00, but no shop that sells them would be open.
We gave up for the moment and went to the tire shop. Inspection of the tire showed TWO nails in it. But when they took it off to repair the holes, they found that the tread was separating. For those of you not up on tire lingo that means “blow out is emanate” and that we had been blessed to drive down the interstate on it. No fix, new tire needed! The fellow had a usable used tire and we were safe again for only $30.00. Praise God. So Saturday night we were feeling blessed to be alive even if we had not made much progress on the heater.
Sunday we decided that we had better not go to church and instead see what progress we could make on the heater. When Tim went back to the trailer Sunday to work on the heater, he noticed that someone had tried to break into Karen’s trailer. The door had been jimmied. We can’t tell if they got in but nothing was taken. Karen needed dead bolts! And wooden dowels in the windows so that they couldn’t be forced open.
After lunch, Leroy called, he had thought of someone that might be able to fix the igniter or sell us a used one. He told Tim to drive out to this guy’s shop and ask for Earl. I wish I could tell you this story like Tim told it to me. But in the first place remember it was Sunday afternoon, and we learned later that Earl isn’t even there a lot through the week. Earl turned out to be Earl Spencer of Spencer’s Oil. Earl is maybe 65-70 years old and he had a barn full of oil furnaces and an old van full of parts. He took one look at the igniter and started gathering parts from the van, from the barn, back to the barn, and then sat on the steps of the building with Tim putting it together. All the time asking questions about what Tim had done and what he had not tried. Also they covered a number of other subjects: Karen’s boss’s new house (2.7 million dollars), the new Navy airstrip going into Sussex county, other Chesterfield gossip, and Tim’s job. Then he explained to Tim that he would have to “bleed the line.” When Tim told him that he did not know how, Earl took him upstairs in the barn where there were at least 50 oil heaters, found our model and showed him how to bleed the line. Then he gave Tim the bill. $15.00. One of the parts that he put on it, we know would have cost $12 at the hardware store, if it had been open. Tim felt like he had made a new friend.
While Tim was out at Spencer’s Oil, I was cleaning house. I have been up in Fairfax now for four months and my poor house has been neglected. I moved up here leaving a mess in every room. I brought up my sewing machine but left tubs of fabric in the bedroom for instance. So I ran around sorting and putting things away. Finally I sat down on the floor and started sorting one of the tubs of fabric. Most of the fabric in the tub I am saving for a project that I want to do when I get time. But I could see through the clear plastic that on the bottom was some fabric that is not for that project. So I pulled out the fabric a piece at a time and folded it into piles. Just as I pulled the next to the last piece out, I saw… I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was my jewelry box. I have no idea how it got there. I sat there on the floor and opened it and looked at my jewelry and cried. I thanked God and cried. I haven’t touched that fabric in months. How did the box get there? My best guess is, that when I came in tired, I tried to lay the box on the sewing table and it fell into the tub of fabric. Then somehow it slid between the layers of fabric. Maybe when I looked in the tub, I buried it deeper instead of revealing it. To me, it was a blessing beyond belief.
Then Tim called with his story about Earl. Tim went to the trailer and put in the igniter and bled the line. When he turned on the heater it started up. Praise God. Karen had the day off, so we went Christmas shopping that evening. We managed to find at least one thing for each of the boys. I helped Karen pick out a few gifts for her friends and we went to our favorite restaurant for a late dinner. After dinner Macy’s was still open so we went there to shop a little more. We bought Karen a new sweater. Tim and I also got her a new pair of earrings that I wrapped and put a note on that said, “Do not open until Christmas morning.”
While we were in Macy’s something strange happened. I didn’t see or hear anything. I was helping Karen pick out the sweater and we were walking across the women’s department to find a mirror. Tim said that he over heard a couple’s conversation. The woman asked, “Who is that woman?” And the man answered, “It’s that famous woman in the apron.” And they just kept walking. I pondered this for a while before I figured out that they must go to church at St. Phillips. That is the one that Tim and I delivered a carload of food to for their food bank. Maybe donating that much food qualifies one for being famous in that church? What do you think? It seemed somehow a fitting end for the day.
On Monday, Tim put new locks in Karen’s doors and cut dowels to jam the windows with. I hooked up her computer’s printer. I also got a new antenna for her TV and hooked it up. Oh, I hemmed some new pants that she bought at Macy’s. Then we had to pack the car and drive back to Fairfax. We got the presents wrapped by a little after midnight. I didn’t make one church service!
Today, (Christmas) Karen called at about 7AM. She loved the earrings. And, oh, her heat isn’t working again! I had her pack up and go get her neighbor to drive her to my house! Then I talked her through changing the settings on my thermostat. Even the 60 degrees I had it set it at was warmer than the 52 in her trailer. Tim suspects that it is the filter this time. When you get oil added to the tank, (which we did Monday,) sludge on the bottom can get stirred up and get in the filter. So now we need to make another trip to Chester. We can’t guess what adventures God has in store for us this time! It might be a week before I get back to interceding at the church again.
But when I do, I will have on my new socks and silk long johns and I will have my “tunes” on my iPod. Because they were all under the tree this morning. And when you see me, ask to see my speaker system. Nathan got it for me. It is called the Journi. It is meant to be taken on trips. It even comes with a changeable plug and transformer so that it can be used over seas. It is the coolest speaker system that I have ever seen. One charge lasts for 10 hours of amplification of your iPod. So even if I go traveling, I can take it with me. I think it is wonderful.
I think that this has been the grandest Christmas ever!
Only one last note. This afternoon we went to see the movie, Charlie Wilson’s War. I recommend it. It has a lot of flesh in it, so if you are shocked easily, that may bother you. But the movie is based on a true story and I think it is one that everyone needs to hear. Everyone in our family gives it 2 thumbs up.
I hope you all had a very blessed Christmas! Next to my family, the thing that I thank God for most is you all!
Love,
Rebecca
