My dilemma...

I woke up today to a really cold house. This might be no big deal for some of you, but being cold is really hard for me...as in, it makes me crabby, irritable, and uncomfortable. You might even say it's physically painful for me to be cold. During our dating, Isaac quickly adopted Justin's long-time manta of, "Warm wife, happy life," and it has followed us into marriage, equaling to a house that Isaac lets me keep at 70 degrees (which, believe it or not, still feels cold to me at times). So you can see what a bit of a shock it is to my mood when I awake to a furnace that has apparently stopped working again...yes, again. This is the third time it has broken in the past month and a half. The first time was in December when we finally discovered it was leaking ridiculously high amounts of carbon monoxide into our house, so it got shut off for two weeks while they replaced it with a new one. They brought in space heaters, but let's just say space heaters are slightly more expensive than our old furnace was. As in gouge my eye out more expensive. Then a few weeks later, the new heater stopped working as well and we were without heat for a couple days while our landlords fixed it. That was a mere two weeks ago.

Fastforward to this morning. Isaac had gotten up and left early to go snowboarding, so it was just me when I woke up in the iceberg. I mentioned I hate being cold, but I really hate waking up and being freezing cold with no way to get warm. I fiddled with the heater again, but to no avail. I actually almost started crying, I was so frustrated that this was happening again to us. Or to me, more specifically, since Isaac doesn't mind the cold nearly as much.

So here I am, sitting on our bedroom floor next to the only wall heater we have, waiting for our landlord to bring us more space heaters once again, and I have a dilemma. My first inclination is to be annoyed at our landlords for not fixing the heater well enough last time and even more annoyed because it's really their heater that keeps breaking down, and we are the ones who have to pay the extra heating costs. But I also hear this small voice inside me whispering that having heat is a blessing, and the words spoiled American keep coming to my mind. What about the millions of people, both in America and around the world, who are cold constantly in the winter months because they can't afford a constant heating system like we have? Or maybe they don't even have a roof over their heads to give them shelter from the freezing temperatures. There are so many who go without basic needs, and here I am with all of my needs met and most of my wants met as well, complaining because my heater went out and I have to be colder for a few hours. Sure, we pay a little extra this month for heat, but at least we have heat, and we have landlords who immediately bring over space heaters, even if it's Sunday morning and they're not working.

I suppose the dilemma is a simple one - be thankful for what I have and how I've been blessed, or be angry because I'm spoiled, slightly inconvenienced and think I deserve better.

It's tough trying to live unselfishly and joyfully sometimes. Ooope, there's the doorbell...