Celebrate – Then Keep Moving

Celebrate? Have you ever had a great day. Things were just going well and life seemed awesome? Have you ever had one of those days turn abruptly? I just had one of the later. I had spent some time with my wife doing some service that brings us a lot of joy and we were feeling oh so happy. We got home and she went to the refrigerator to grab something to eat when she noticed that the light was out. She asked me if it had been out that morning. It hadn’t been. Our daughter said that our son had said it was out when he got into it that afternoon. I took a look. It seemed OK except for the light….until I opened the freezer. No light! No sounds.

It was dead. I pulled it out from the wall and we tested the outlet. Live!

Evaluate

OK my friend, where are you right now? What were your thoughts? Now, what if it were you? What emotions are coming up? Out?

I can think of a lot of ways that I could have reacted. Anger, frustration, blame, depression, upset stomach, punching something, yelling, crying, melt-down, denial, mushroom cloud, or hate? How about gratitude, faith, curiosity, wonder, inspiration, determination, calmness, peace, resoluteness, or humility?

What Do I Have to Celebrate?

Did you ever think about how much an appliance has served you? My food didn’t spoil or thaw. I felt grateful that we noticed when we did and that the insulation on the thing was so good. I was grateful that we have other freezers (that still had some space) downstairs, so nothing ended up thawing. We had a couple of days of monsoon rains the two days prior. That had dropped temperatures by 15 degrees down to a high of 86. Wow, did I ever feel grateful like this when I had lost use of refrigerators before?

My wife reacted in her typical determined fashion, hence, figure out how to fix it. We had already fixed a compressor switch on it before. Maybe we could fix this. The first thing she found indicated that it might be a controller board problem, over $200 to replace. Then she dug deeper. I temporarily went into denial. I have a love/hate relationship with fixing appliances. She found that it might only be a blown fuse on the board. How to verify that? Call a friend. When I got a hold of him, he happened to be driving up my street from helping someone else. Ten minutes later we had determined that it was indeed the fuse.

Learn Something New

I had never really played much with fuses. I’d replaced a few on a car and long ago had replaced the old screw in socket types at my dad’s hardware store. This was going to require soldering. Oh yeah, my son had gotten a soldering kit when he was working on the electronics merit badge and had repaired some cords for us. I had helped him learn how to solder so I had learned a little. OK, what do I need to get to fix it? A fuse. Trip to a couple home improvement stores and we had fuses and only got wet from the wicked thunderstorm as we ran into the house. Great timing to avoid it!

Hmm, I should have looked closer at the old fuse. I need a fuse holder. Where do I get that? Not at this time of night. So maybe we should take care of the chicken chunks we had put in the refrigerator to thaw so we could put it into one pound amounts in the freezer. We knew it needed to be done soon. Now was the time. It was still nice and cold. Job done, and the box still fit in the freezer downstairs.

For breakfast, cereal, and the milk is still cold. Now get the holder. Appliance repair stores? Nope. Auto parts? Check! OK, take pictures of the board and the connectors before I pull it all apart. Watch a video or two on how to solder copper wires. Done. Time to solder, and it worked better than I had ever done it before. Reassemble and connect the wires, and hurray, it is working! Less than $10 for the parts and the ice in the freezer hadn’t even lost more than 50% of its size.

Celebrate, Why?

I like to celebrate successes. No matter how insignificant some might consider them. I’ve learned that success builds on success. I did something an appliance repairman told me could not be done. I helped my wife feel more secure in her home, and I found that I can do things that I haven’t done before. Well, I can also still learn and succeed. Too often people throw in the towel when the way looks tough. They would rather pay the high price and not try. Buy a new refrigerator. We had determined that was the route we would go if the fuse didn’t work as we had already invested in repairs in the past. That was a choice we were willing to make, but we tried first, and we succeeded.

Regardless of the outcome, I learned a lot. The struggle was worth it from what I gained. I gained perspective, knowledge of something I didn’t know before. New skills were started and improved. I see it all as a win. I choose to see the experience as a fantastic opportunity for me to grow. What are you going to do with your next challenge?