Blessings in Disguise

It's been really really really hot here (nearly 100 degrees in the shade), which, I suppose, is no surprise since we live in an inhospitable desert.

Cooling is not a luxury here, but a necessity. And we can't afford the $500 a MONTH it takes to cool our house to 80 degrees using the ancient air conditioner that's on the roof.

So last year we prayed ourselves into a $50 swamp cooler that actually worked, once I'd done a little maintenance on it.

But this year I turned it on and it was working...sort of. Worse every day.

Naturally, there are none on Craigslist right now since everyone needs them. And we didn't have much cash to replace all the parts I thought might be bad on ours--not even just the pads, which was going to be my first attempt.

So I prayed that we could find a way to get it working and get the house cool.

So OF COURSE the pump died today.

But then it turned out we had just exactly enough money on hand for a new pump ($20), and that seems to have fixed all the problems--and I didn't have to buy ALL the new parts I thought I'd need (and would have bought instead of the pump had it not died). We didn't even need new pads, which are up to $8 EACH this year.

So it was a blessing, and an answer to my prayer, for the part that was causing the problems to break--so that I'd know which one it was and not waste my time and meagre resources on useless fixes.