Gratitude and (almost) house fires

My house almost caught fire, and I had no idea of the danger until it was over, pieced together by burn marks on a wall and other clues around an old boiler system. I called a specialist to look at it, and he said bluntly: he’s come to believe things happen for a reason, and our house is still standing for a reason. I always try to express gratitude to others and to God, but as we come into the holiday season I thought this story was especially worth bringing to you all.

Faith Full is a Catholic podcast hosted by Tony Ganzer. In this short episode we hear from Fr. Robert Nixon, OSB, translator of St. Aloysius Gonzaga’s Meditations on the Holy Angels. Plus an excerpt from St. Thérèse of Lisieux's autobiography "The Story of a Soul."

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When you know what you’re looking for the clues are obvious: burn marks on a wall, a tripped electrical breaker, and a broken boiler. In hindsight it’s easy. But in day-to-day life, it’s not. About a month ago I started to run my heating system before winter to make sure everything was working well. My house was built in the 1950s and part of the house has radiant floor heating. Essentially a gas-fired boiler heats up water that is sent through pipes under the floor. When it works, it works well!

The boiler pilot light was out when I went to run my test, so I cleaned around the boiler and relit the light. The system kicked on, and for about two days it seemed to work well, until it didn’t. I played with the thermostat trying to get the system back on but it didn’t work. Around the same time, randomly, an electrical plug in my garage stopped working. It wasn’t clear the problems were related…(foreshadowing).

Ultimately I decided to call the heating repair company first to do a tune-up on the system and figure out what’s wrong. It took just a minute to see the problem. One of the burners was off its rack, and old fire-proofing material had crumbled. Flames had been shooting out the back of the unit onto the wall, ultimately hitting the wiring harness to the thermostat. “I’m not sure why they wired it like that,” the technician told me. “But it’s good they did.”

The melted wiring tripped the breaker and shut down the boiler, cutting the flow of gas and stopping the fire. The malfunctioning outlet must’ve been on an adjacent circuit or something. It’s still sinking in, just how fortunate we are that our home wasn’t taken in a fire, and the way the system was built in the 1950s kept us safe.

As Catholics, this brought a few things to mind for my wife and me: one about St. Thérèse of Lisieux and the other about angels. I’ve been given the gift of seeing a stone moved from my path: the fire threatened my home, the place that my family considers safe and secure. Even if the fire had started, we have smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, fire extinguishers–all things that would’ve likely kept us physically safe, but still would’ve lost property.

I hope that in my journeying toward Heaven that I can use the time, talents and experiences God has given me to show my gratitude. It’s a gratitude that extends beyond just the holiday season, of course, and is rooted deeply in what makes me, me. I’m just thankful to get to keep going, with a home that’s intact.

Thank you for listening to this short episode of Faith Full. Please share, like and subscribe if you find it worthwhile.