Electricity, Insulation, and Psalm 91

By Bobby Neal Winters

Our biggest barriers are in our own minds.

Fear is our most powerful enemy.

Fear of failure is the tallest wall we have to climb.

My attention was directed to Psalm 91 when I was poking through social media last night.  I looked it up, and the following portion spoke to me:

You will not fear the terror of night, /

    nor the arrow that flies by day, /

nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,/

    nor the plague that destroys at midday. /

A thousand may fall at your side, /

    ten thousand at your right hand,/

    but it will not come near you.

At the time, I felt the need to “do something with this.”  This is the result.

I am insulating my garage.  I am turning it into a workshop.  This was Jean’s idea.  She looked upon me with pity as I worked until my hands were red and numb last winter in my former workshop while her car was safe and dry in the garage, so she yielded the garage to my use.

This meant the garage had to be heated or I would be back to where I was before.

When I was director of the general studies program on campus, giving advice to the students who entered that program, I would tell them to look at where they wanted to go and to set up a plan that would get them to that end.

I took my own advice.  I wanted a warm workshop, so I looked at some YouTube videos: How do you heat a workshop? There were a lot of options, but I settled on electrical heat. 

My endpoint was a garage heated with electrical heat, but if I didn’t insulate it first it would (1) cost a fortune and (2) still be cold.  It was also clear that the electrical heater I needed would have to run off of 240 volts. (I grew up calling this “220” but it’s actually 240.) 

The electrical had to be done before the drywall and the insulation was put up. It’s just easier that way.

But here’s the thing: I am terrified of “220.” I have a cemetery in my mind of people--good, kind, smart people--who have been killed by 220.  Most of them are imaginary people, true, but that mental cemetery is there.  It is not irrational to be afraid of electricity.

Fear is a manifestation of something that God has given us to protect us.  It comes from a good place.  But like a fierce, wild mustang, it must be captured, understood, and domesticated before it can be a useful racehorse for us.

We should capture our Fear and domesticate it to Respect.

Electricity has the power to kill me, but if I respect it, it will be my ally. 

So I watched a bunch of YouTube videos on how to install a 240 volt outlet.  All of them showed how to do it, and then said it was for entertainment purposes and said to hire an electrician.  Darned good advice.  If you can get one to come out, please let me know how you did it.

After preparing myself, turning off the power main to the whole house and checking at the breaker box that the electricity was indeed off, I installed the “220” breaker and hooked it to the outlet.  It took 20 minutes wall-to-wall if you don’t count the hours of YouTube videos I watched.

Since having done that, I’ve been putting up roll after roll of fiberglass insulation and screwing panels of osb to my garage walls.  I’ve got about an hour’s worth of work to finish the walls, and I will do that after I finish this column. (The ceiling still needs to be done and if any of you have a drywall jack they can loan me, let me know.)

I was as afraid of doing the insulation as I was doing the 220.  This wasn’t because I was afraid of being killed.  It was simply because I had never done it.  It was filed away in my brain as something only experts could do. I had erected barriers in my own brain.

The barriers were taken down in the same way as before: I watched a lot of YouTube videos on insulation. (Watching YouTube videos is dangerous too; their algorithm will start bringing you a lot of ads for Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Menards.)

Just as God has given us the gift of Fear which we need to tame into Respect, He wants us to use the Respect to gain the knowledge we need in order to overcome the barriers we meet.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )