Sunday morning’s sermon was based on 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22 – “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not put out the Spirit’s fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil.”
After a great message, our pastor wrapped up with a challenge. The 14-Day Grumble Challenge. The challenge is to go 14 days with no grumbling (verbally or mentally), no complaining, no whining, no arguing, no griping – but in everything GIVE THANKS. He suggested putting a rubber band on your wrist and popping it when you broke the challenge. (I’ll admit I didn’t do that part. 
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So today, the boys and I arrive home after running some errands. I pull my car up into the garage, and I can hear a faint beeping sound. When I get out of the car, I hear many not-so-faint beeping sounds. I kind of brushed it off thinking that nearby construction must be going on in full swing after the Christmas holidays. I walk into the house and am suddenly hit with very loud beeping sounds. After a quick investigation, I discover that every smoke alarm in our house is going off!
I quickly sent the boys outside, while I investigated further. I found absolutely no smoke, or natural gas leak – and then I was perplexed. What do I do? So, I went to the garage and called Hubby on his cellphone, filled him in. He said to do all the things I had already done, but he did suggest checking the attic, just to be safe. I did – no fire, no smoke, no funky smells. He then says that we must have a bad battery in one of them. (All of our smoke detectors are wired together, so if one goes off, all of them will go off.) He suggests grabbing a set of hearing protection from his office, and then take down the smoke detectors one by one until I find the one noise making culprit.
We hung up and I went off to find the noise maker. I took 4 out of 5 of them down before the noise ceased. Ah, silence! I found that number 4 had an old battery. It was probably the one installed in the alarm when the house was built. Wow.
Well, when I saw a battery that was probably 10 years old, I figured I ought to go ahead and change all of the batteries, even the ones we changed back when we reset the clocks. We didn’t have that many 9volt batteries, so the boys and I made a quick trip to the hardware store. I picked up a handful of 9volts and went to check out. Cashier rang up my stuff, I swiped my bank card. “Uh, Ma’am, your card was declined.” I praise God that I didn’t yell “WHAT?!” or some other inappropriate phrase, I just calmly gave her another bank card and said sorry.
I made a bee-line for the house. Upon arrival, I passed the 5 empty smoke detectors that were waiting for me and went directly to my online banking site. Turns out there must have been a glitch, because there were plenty of funds. Whew! One crisis averted!
I went back to assembling and re-hanging the smoke detectors. After getting them all back up, with new batteries, I felt a sigh of relief. Whew! Two big crises and I didn’t complain! Yay, God! I returned all of the necessary tools to their locations and settled in so we could get started on school for the day.
Ten minutes later, the smoke detectors started beeping again. I started laughing. My poor kids probably think Mommy went off her rocker. I grabbed all the necessary tools again, and pulled down the smoke detectors until the noise ceased. This time I only had to pull down 3.
Then I called Hubby and told him he had a project waiting for him when he got home.
So – a 14-day Grumble Challenge. Well, if it was easy, it wouldn’t be called a challenge.
Thank you, Lord, for obnoxious beeping sounds, especially when it protects our home! Thank you, Lord, for helping me to keep my mouth shut when I wanted to say grumble-ey things. Thank you, Lord, for all of your many blessings.
