30 Days of Thankfulness; Day 12 {Thankful for help}

Today: I am humbled and grateful for people who care about our family.

To take hours out of their weekend...

To get dirty (seriously, all over body + eyes, nose, and mouth gritty, dirty) and dive into physical labor...

For our family.

Thankful doesn't even begin to describe it,

but I am,

so it will.


We have a wood burning furnace outside. We heat our entire home with it. It also has an element that we have added to our water heater, and we no longer have to use electricity to heat our water.

Free heat and hot water? What could be better??

Welllll.... It is very wonderful. But, alot, alot, alot of work {free is a relative term I suppose}.

Every year we try to fill a little shed, that sits next to our house, with fire wood. Usually Dave will work away at this task an hour here and an hour there, in the evenings after work.

It takes a while. Lots of cutting, stacking, loading, and unloading wood.

Once the shed is completely full, we are pretty set for the winter.

The shed is usually full  by November.

We live in Michigan. Not having at least several rows of wood in the shed by November is recipe for anxiety. Especially for Dave...

This year Dave is a full time student. He happens to be in a stressful accounting class.

This morning, November 12, the shed looked like this.

Empty.

And then this happened:

And this:

And by afternoon the shed looked like this:

Full.

Completely full.

Kind of like our hearts.

I literally could watch this burden melt away from Dave's shoulders as the day wore on.

He's a provider. He works hard. This year has been different for him, and I know it has been hard for him to feel behind in some areas.

This was really big for us.