A couple weeks ago, Candy cleaned the coffee pot and it quit a few days later. Saturday she "spic and spanned" the fridge. The next morning I heard, "Oh NO! zzzzaptsnap scream." The lights flickered. I jumped from bed hollering "Are you alright?"
I ran to the kitchen. The GFI had tripped and the fridge wasn't working. When Candy reset it, it spit out sparks. "Here, let me do it", I boasted. I pulled the cord, reset the trip and plugged it back in. "Whoa!" it spit the plug right out back at me. Well that's not right. So I tested it with the toaster (smart right?). All went well. I guess the fridge is shot, it is 11 years old. We realized we hadn't had to shop for a fridge in over 20 years. We went to 6 big box stores. We saw videos of these beautiful fridges with beautiful organized food items. I asked Candy why it was ours never looked like that. Ours always looked like chop suey was all we ever ate. I saw the look of love in her eyes. They have a fridge that will talk to you, interactive touch TV screen, a magic touch window that let you see what was inside, a water dispenser and your choice of ice( cube or crushed) and even will make you hot coffee. About the only thing it didn't do was wipe your butt, which would have been helpful when I saw the price. We did buy one of those "dorm mini" fridges about ten years ago ($100.00) and thankfully it still works. I suggested we buy 4 more and stack them together, one for each food group. We shopped all day hoping to get a delivery in a day or two on one in our budget. 8-10 days wherever we went. However, the $5K Smart SOB fridge we could have next day, but no free delivery. !?!?!?!? We found a value, so it's ice and coolers and the mini fridge for a week. Talk nice to your old fridge, BUT NEVER CLEAN IT. So... the next day we realized the hot water tank bit the dust also. I was scalded in a minor shaving incident. It was discovered a slow long term leak actually had shorted out the thermostat to run continually on. I replaced it the same day in very short order. The tank had rusted and was leaking. Far less costly than a fridge, but guess what, they have bluetooth tech for this also. Oh yeah, you tell the darn thing the water is too cool or whatever. Just not for me thank you. All is well, excellent, combined with our solar hot water heat collector. Replacement took about a half hour. Candy helped. Due to the money pinch, I had not tithed to my Church in the last couple weeks. As I tried to fudge it the budget, it dawned on me I had put our comfort ahead of this principle of God. So we decided to pay the late fees on the credit card and give back His portion. God is soooo funny! Candy is not laughing. Our new fridge was supposed to be delivered on a Wednesday. I had stocked the old fridge with 60 lbs of ice, hoping to make it through. She asked me to pull the old fridge away from the wall so she could clean in advance of the replacement. I said, hey, let's try to plug it in again, the worst it can do is to trip the breaker. I plugged it in very carefully. Not only did it not spark and pop out, but it started running along smoothly and quietly. Hahahaha.... So now what? I say we cancel the delivery and see how long it runs, maybe 10 minutes, maybe another 10 years. Well we were upset about the money, and had taken so long to research and purchase, but then Candy was excited about a new fridge. We joked about an anniversary trip being better than a talking fridge. We'll wait 12 hours to see how she keeps running. AND if Candy is still talking to me, and the fridge is still running, maybe we can take another anniversary trip this year on the savings. Candy wants me to hook the old water heater back up and see if it stops leaking. She is hard on a guy. Hey Alice, how about an anniversary trip to the moon? Well the fridge not only continued to run, but that was five months ago. We started diligently tithing about about 3 years ago. It was hard at first. However , the promise of God is real and was kept. We continue to prosper in ways we had not anticipated. This does not always mean a monetary gain. Our failure to keep our part of the ten percent solution was poignantly pointed out to us. And in fact, we are going to take our 42nd anniversary trip to Athens, Greece in a couple weeks. I'm not a Theologian or Biblical scholar, but this is one promise made by God that he says we may test. AMEN!
