On gratitude and loss and sorting things out

Greetings to you, friends!

After last week where the weather around the Midwest tried to act like Texas, we are experiencing much milder temperatures and all breathing a sigh of relief. 

The timing couldn’t be better for us personally because on Friday night, as we waited for the house to cool down to our comfortable “we are back home” 73 degrees, the thermostat stubbornly hung on to 79. 

Oh, the blower was going…but only lukewarm air was coming out of the vents. By Saturday we had to face the fact that our almost twenty year old AC was hurting badly. 

Since the weather had moved in our favor and we do have a guest room in the lower level that stays nice and cool, we were spared a weekend service call and waited it out until yesterday. We hoped it would be some little part that needed replacing, but when I walked around the side of the house to check on Russ, I got a sad face and a thumb’s down. 

Long story short, we are giving each other a new air conditioner for Christmas.

And next year’s birthdays, and anniversary, and Valentines and….

It’s all good and the timing couldn’t have been better and this is part of home owning, but it got me thinking about something to do with loss. 

So bear with me as I sort through my musings. 

Sometimes we lose things that we took for granted. All of a sudden the thing we just accepted without any or minimal gratitude gets taken. In this case, we are most likely stricken with how little we appreciated what we had. 

These circumstances bring us a kind of wake up call and we regret our thoughtlessness and mourn our lack of awareness. It might make us more thankful for what we do have and hopefully refines us. 

But sometimes we lose things for which we have been extremely thankful.

In the case of the luxury of having an air conditioner for our home, we have said just about every day this summer how thankful we are for a cool house. 

We mention it when we come home from a walk or just getting a meal on the table. We both have repeatedly said how blessed we are to have it. We have added it to our prayers before meals, thanking God to have a cool home and praying for those who do not.

Now air conditioning units do have a life span and this one did well. The replacement of it is no sting from the enemy. Rather it’s demise is just a result of life on planet earth. But the feeling of not having it the last few days and knowing how grateful we have been for it is different than when we have lost things for which we were lacking in gratitude. 

So it makes me think of how we respond when something for which we have been so very thankful for is taken from us.

And I think it is in these places where we do not have to face conviction for our lack of gratitude, that we must face our lack of understanding about the temporal nature of this world. 

Grateful and thankful or not, everything we have will one day be taken away.

Or we will be.

It is a gentle reminder that this is not my home. This is the place where I sojourn until I am taken to my eternal Home. 

It is good to sit in that at times. With a fan on, if necessary. And to be thankful that while the care and maintenance of this temporary space is my responsibility, Jesus is preparing my next and last residence. 

I am so grateful and that will never be take away. 

Keep cool, keep calm and carry on <3