faith and value

The sure sign that we consider it cold outside.
Right now we have one warm room in the house.
It's a wonderful kind of warm. It even smells warm.
But not the dry smell of a heater when it comes on the first time in the winter, but of wood smoke and autumn. It will get down to thirty-five degrees tonight, so I'm going to try to get the stove very hot before going to bed. The fire will be out by morning, but I'm hoping for enough hot coals to restart it before the children get up for Church.

The temperature is expected to climb quickly back up to the seventies this week, so we'll have time to get more wood cut for the winter. My oldest son was able to get a pretty good stack started with an ax.

 But the remaining will get done faster with a chainsaw.

Before the mobile home next to us was bought by the present owners, the tenants living there took it upon themselves  to start clearing the fence line on my property. They assumed it was an easement between our properties, but the truth is the entire line of trees and brush was on my side of the property line. I pulled up in my driveway one day to find them tending a large bonfire made of hardwoods from my yard. I stopped them before they burned this tree, but it's been laying in the yard ever since, waiting for us to get the chainsaw working. Once cut and aged a few months, it will keep one end of the house warm a few weeks.

We had the wood stove installed the first winter we lived here. When searching for a home, I was drawn toward the houses that had stoves for heat. As it turns out, we settled on a house without a stove, but also without a heat source for part of the house. After much research and store searching I bought the largest stove I could afford and had it installed. Who would have thought there are people who make a living selling and installing wood stoves in south east Texas?

Our first winter, I purchased wood. The man who installed the stove referred to me a man in the another town, and I had to pay a pretty penny. Later that same winter I was able to get a load free from another man who had removed a large oak from a yard and allowed my children and me to gather the smaller pieces and fill the back of my Suburban. I admit I was concerned about the next winter and what it would cost in wood.
When the next winter came, a friend loaded up my truck with wood he had purchased for me, without telling me. Soon after, he lost a tree to a storm, and he cut the tree for me and kept us warm all season. I felt protected and cared for. This winter, we have enough wood  left from this tree and from our property to keep us warm all winter, once we get it cut to fit the stove.
I have been told that faith is a gift. I have prayed for this gift, but it eludes me. I profess the Creed willingly, but under the veil I wear to Mass is always a bit of doubt.
After two winters of wood being provided, I have no doubt that we'll continue to be warmed by our stove in the future, but I'm not sure I'd be so confident if I had not already had two winters of provisions. Sometimes, it's not my lack of faith in a higher power, but my insecurity in my own worth that keeps me from believing that all be well.

For twenty-five years, I heard "you can take care of yourself" with regards to everything from filling up my truck with fuel to walking to it in a parking garage late at night in the fourth largest city in the US.  Not only was my basic need of feeling safe and protected not met, but what I heard in his words, "you can take care of yourself", and what I felt every time I walked alone to my car in the dark was, "you are not valuable enough for me to be concerned about you or take care of you." Not valuable enough in the eyes of my spouse- in the most intimate of human relationships. If I didn't feel valued by my husband with whom I'd spent all of my adult life, how could I feel valued by anyone?
I've learned that yes, I can take care of myself, or, at least, can find people to help me get things done. 
But the idea that I am worthy  to have my needs met -even by the One who created me-  is taking a little more time for me to learn.
As time goes on, and as I receive love from others, I am learning that it was not my lack of worth that prevented my former spouse from valuing me, but his own inadequacies. But as my spiritual director recently told me, my biggest wounds are not what has been done to me, but what my reaction is, and only I can control my reactions.  Getting out of that relationship was the necessary step that stopped me from receiving the message from my husband that I'm not valued.Clearly, I don't need him to fill my truck, walk with me in the dark, or chop wood for my winters.
It's now up to me to allow my heart to be loved and heal, and trust God to take care of the winter cold.