Flip the Switch

There is a mysterious red switch in my house that says Emergency On Off Switch. I didn't dare touch this switch for the first few years of living in my house. Our first winter in the house we woke up one morning and noticed that we could see our breath. The heat stopped working and it was cold. The next night my wife and I borrowed a mini heater, slept in sleeping bags, and cuddled just to stay alive. It was on a weekend so we had to wait until Monday for the heating repair guy to come.

The heating repair guy told us that we had an old unit but that there was nothing wrong with it. It's a gas unit and it came with our 13 year old house. He hit it. It started working. That was the end of our heat problems...for that year.

The next winter the same thing happened. Just read the paragraph above again because it was the exact same situation. After the heating repair guy came this year our heat went out again. I called a friend who knows what he is doing and he came by to look at the heat. He said it was an old unit, and we were going to have to replace it at some point. It would cost about 5 grand, but currently there is nothing wrong with it. His suggestion was to flip the mysterious red switch that says Emergency On Off Switch, and wait ten seconds. After ten seconds he said we should flip the switch back. This worked and got us through another winter.

This winter our heat went off once again, but this time I didn't call the repair man. I simply flipped the mysterious red switch that says Emergency On Off Switch. We have to flip this switch a few times a week, but our heat stays on...most of the time.

Life often throws at us obstacles, problems, hurt and pain. Most of the time we don't know how to handle life when it breaks. I get to spend a lot of time with teenagers. I've listened to some horrific stories of sexual abuse, neglecting parents, and broken hearts. I hurt for these students because often they turn to alcohol, drugs, cutting, or sex. I tell them that I don't judge them. I understand why. The problem is that for some reason they don't want to deal with the problem. Whenever you have a broken heart it makes sense that you want to fix it. The problem is that most things people try are temporary. It's like flipping the mysterious red switch in my house that says Emergency On Off Switch. It helps for a little while but until we change the unit we repeat the same cycle over and over again. Eventually the only cure for a broken heart is to forgive whoever broke it. If you don't bitterness, hurt, and pain will continually cause you to be broken. Band aids don't help gun shot wounds. When someone hurts you you've got to take care of the problem. It takes time, but eventually forgiving the one who hurt you is the only real solution. Everything else is just temporary.