Giving Credit Where It's Due (rant) exmormon

TL;DR God didn't repair the sink and the refrigerator. I did.

My husband has a tendency to overestimate the severity of minor household problems. He is always certain that a tiny repair will turn into a $10,000 renovation, especially when I am doing the repairs. I was raised to be self-reliant; his parents never let him touch a sharp object lest their precious snowflake might get a booboo. I mean that literally...his mother still cut his meat for him at our wedding dinner. 35 years later, he still believes that I should never try to fix things at home.

Once I printed a fake electrician's receipt because I wanted to change a light switch. Other finicky light fixtures and wall sockets have suddenly had a miraculous healing while he wasn't at home.

So anytime that I repair something, he says that god must have intervened, because there's no way that I could have fixed such a serious problem. And they are always very serious indeed. How serious? Two examples from today:

1. I had just settled into bed after a tough double shift at work. I have heart damage due to lupus, and I can go into tachycardia if awakened suddenly. It's no big deal, because a bolus of my heart medication can fix it within 20 minutes.
   

He woke me up with a shout from the kitchen. "The refrigerator is broken!" Before i was even out of bed, I could hear him literally praying in tears, "How can we afford a new refrigerator? How can we get it delivered before our food spoils? O god help us!"

I begin by replacing the lightbulb, since that was how he knew that the refrigerator was a goner...the lightbulb wasn't working. When this didn't fix things, I asked him to move the refrigerator away from the wall so I could see behind it. I quickly figured out that there was a short in the electric plug. Since I'm not allowed to do electrical repairs, I squeezed it back into place temporarily so that the motor came on, and said, "Look! The plug had fallen out of the wall." I asked him to leave the fridge out, so that I could go back there after he left to "vacuum up the dust bunnies" (actually, to put in a new plug).

As this point my heart was acting up, so I went into the bedroom to take a pill, while he stood in the kitchen praising god.

1. Moments later, my heart was slowing down and I was drifting back to sleep. My husband rushed into the bedroom. "The sink is blocked! Oh god, how can we afford a whole new sink? We'll probably need new pipes for the whole house!"

(By the way, we have enough money to cover an emergency, and my home repair efforts have prevented us from ever needing to.)

I suggested that we start with Drano, and use my plumbing snake if that didn't work. He said, "But you'll break the pipes with the snake! We must call a plumber! Oh god..."

I assured him that I wouldn't use the snake, and if the Drano didn't work, I would call a plumber. He eventually wandered off to go to the office, and I got out the snake and had it fixed in 5 minutes. (Of course, I had to lie and say that I just used the Drano.)

This evening, he confronted me about my recent turn toward atheism. "How can you say that god didn't take care of us? That was two miracles in one morning!"

I replied grumpily, "three miracles, counting the fact that you didn't give me a heart attack by waking me up screaming -- twice -- when things weren't working."

I've decided (as always) not to tell him that I did a little more to fix things, because in the past he's stayed up all night in terror, waiting for the fire to start, when I've done an electrical repair. It's why I outright lie to him; it's for his own good.

But I'm sick and tired of him overreacting to trivial problems, and then crediting god with the repairs (after I've kept this house running for all these years). But he must have miracles to show that god loves him, I guess.

I always hated that about F&T meeting too. There, I tied it all back to TSCC, LOL.

Submitted March 11, 2017 at 05:20AM by karunya1008 http://ift.tt/2nf1lnl exmormon