PERSPECTIVE
We didn't have air conditioning for a month. Four weeks. Twenty eight days and nights. And we live in Houston. And it's summer.
I can't tell you how hot, irritable, frustrated, and uncomfortable we've been. From the bouts of dehydration to the lack of sleep and our new refrigerator shutting off entirely once because it was too hot for it to run, we have been just plain angry and exhausted. Fighting with our home warranty company and dealing with an apathetic HVAC team didn't help. We were hot, and felt powerless to resolve the situation.
You see, we needed one part to fix the AC. But it was backordered. Indefinitely, according to the manufacturer, which our HVAC team told us was code for "discontinued". But until it was officially discontinued they couldn't report anything to our warranty and we just had to keep waiting. Their estimate on the wait time? 3-6 months.
We learned all this, along with their proposed solution to just go ahead a buy a new AC less than 24 hours after we had given away the amount a new AC unit would cost.
You see, G and I have recently been learning and letting our hearts be transformed in the area of tithing and giving. July was the first month we tithed the full 10%. It's also the month we began praying for God to show us where to give in addition to our tithe. It was scary to give the amount He asked for in the timing He asked for it, but we did. And then we sat on our sofa in our hot, humid house just a few hours later and wondered why on earth we had just given away our only chance at cool air this year.
The next day, I went to SoulCycle with Dede and our instructor said something that I knew God wanted me to hear: climbing a hill is a struggle, but the struggle has a purpose. That purpose is not, however, the coast down the back side. It's the summit, and the perspective we gain looking down at what we struggled through and all around us at what we couldn't even see before.
You see, dear Reader, the struggle of giving away what we "needed" to fix our home had a purpose. I believe we needed to learn that obedience matters more than anything else, and that God gives good things to those who love Him (and we are told that we show our love by doing what He has asked (John 14:23, 1 John 5:3) ). The perspective from up there was so much clearer. God is moving and has His hands on bigger things than my AC working, and He called us to be a part of that. I found peace in that on Tuesday.
Oh, and Reader? On Wednesday the part we needed miraculously came in, and I'm sitting here writing this to you in my air conditioned house. How good is our God?
