So thankful

Since we moved to Virginia, we have heated our house with a wood burning stove. Since my in-laws have a large property with plenty of trees, this has been a free alternative to heating our home with the electric furnace (which we learned the hard way would cost almost triple what we pay for rent in a month!). Ben meticulously maintains the stove and pipes to make sure they're clean and things are burning properly.

This Sunday we had quite a scare--we experienced our first (and hopefully only) chimney fire. We came home from church and Ben was stoking the fire before we headed to the farm to spend the afternoon and evening as we always do on Sundays. Just before we headed out the door, he noticed the fire was really raging, which hasn't ever really happened before. All of a sudden he started saying, "We have a problem." And we sure did. There was a fire in the pipes and they had started to turn red from being so hot. Ben dumped water over the pipe and went to get more, and by the time he came back with a filled bucket, the entire pipe was red and part of it was melting, which could've allowed the fire to spread quickly through the house. The fire was burning much harder than we could have contained with water, so Ben used the fire extinguisher.

I try not to be overly attached to stuff, but all the same--some of our stuff is a little more than just stuff, and parting with all of it all in one day would have been really hard. I am so thankful that, in the mercy of God, we had a fire extinguisher, and that Ben was there to handle the situation. If not, we may have had to stand outside and watch our house burn down waiting for a fire truck to get there.

As a side: We're not sure what caused the fire, but Ben is cleaning/replacing the pipes and we're having a professional chimney sweep come to tell us what's going on.

Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!