I felt alone the moment the words left his mouth and came hurdling toward me in slow motion. They punched me in the gut, and tore upwards slashing through the tissues of my heart. It was a miracle that my heart was even still beating after such an attack. He walked out the door, and I sat on the edge of the worn denim couch with my head in my hands. The tears didn’t even need a warm-up, or a dress rehearsal; the sobs came right on cue, in primal roars. Death was here to greet me, I was sure. “This is how I die,” I remember thinking. “Here it is. I’ve always wondered. And this is how it feels. Painful beyond comprehension.” The tightening in my chest stretched downwards, to shake hands with the wrenching in my stomach reaching upwards. I couldn’t even stand upright. A million questions regarding my future survival flooded my brain. I was sure I wouldn’t make it. But the children were hungry, and somebody needed to feed them, which meant standing up, and walking.

In some sort of divine irony, that was the summer of the fire. The Rodeo-Chediski fire originated as two separate fires that merged into one gigantic, blazing inferno of flames that towered one hundred feet high, and eventually became the largest fire in North American history. Few have even heard of Show Low or Cibeque, Arizona, but the fire brought our small, rural wooded mountain community out of obscurity. The sky was an eerie red, and smoke and ash particulates made their way through the screens of even closed windows. News reports became more ominous and threatening as the hours wore on. The fire had jumped the canyon. Now the highway. It was headed straight for our little nobody’s-heard-of-it-town, and I was on my own. My husband had taken his girlfriend and her son to Phoenix to be out of harm’s way. The number of blackened acres grew and grew, and evacuation became inevitable.

It is an interesting thing to do, to walk through one’s home panic-stricken and in shock in order to decide what one will save before it all goes up in flames. I packed my minivan with food, clothing and water for myself and my three children, and in the remaining space I stashed journals; photo albums; baby boxes; the pictures from the walls; and then, I remembered my wedding gown and the box of letters and cards he had written to me during our twelve years of dating, courtship, and marriage. Still holding on; standing up against that fire. Begging, “Don’t let it burn!”

It was a little after 2am when I got the call to evacuate, and I loaded my sleeping children into the van, knees trembling, and headed away from the red sky towards Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I would find safe harbor with my dad. From there, I watched limited news reports on the fire sweeping through our mountain. Houses with too much dead brush around them were being tagged with red ribbons as being unsalvageable. I kept thinking of things I’d forgotten to save. My Christmas ornaments! The home videos! The box in my closet that contained my whole life’s history and was simply labeled, “Jenna’s Memorabilia”. How does one even start to rebuild a life alone?

As we prayed together, my dad pleaded that my house would be spared, yet always added “nevertheless, Thy will be done.” I wanted to curse him. “Do we have to give permission to let it all burn, Dad?” I said. “I mean, really? Haven’t I already lost enough? My husband left me! My family is broken up! Now my house and everything in it? Can’t you stop reminding the Lord that he has the option to take it all?” I was bitter and begrudging and afraid to trust completely in the Lord. I simply could not turn it all over to Him. I wanted to say I was that kind of faithful, but put to the test, I was holding back for sure. I was willing to wheel and deal with the God of heaven, filling my prayers with compromises He might consider as alternative paths for my life, if He would just forego burning my entire life to the ground.

From my Journal, dated June 23, 2002:
“This fire is now the biggest in the nation and is burning the size of the city of Los Angeles. It’s ¼ mile away now, and firefighters say that embers will be falling soon, starting fires in town. Watching the coverage is a surreal experience. It’s a breathtaking sight, until you realize that you recognize the scenery, and the scenery is home.”

I baked cookies to occupy my mind and hands. It made me cry and miss being a wife. I threw in the chocolate chips that I’d been leaving out of the dough for ten years to make his favorite cookies. I went into my room and fell to my knees, in despair. And then, upon rising, I made a list I titled “Things I Know for Sure”. It is a two-page list of all the things that deep in my heart, I value as sure knowledge. One of those items was “The Lord is aware of me and the circumstances of my life. He knows my pain and sorrow, and the deepest yearnings of my heart.” And upon writing that, the peace flooded through me. I prayed again, and gave it all to Him. Take my house. Take everything in it. I am yours.

A change happened within me that day, and that night I had a dream. In my dream, my children and I drove back home to our house in Show Low with trepidation and found it untouched by the fire and whole in every way. There were ashes around that had blown in from the wind, but no damage. I had the feeling that the Lord didn’t want to take everything from me; He simply wanted me to be willing to give it.

A week later, it was finally safe to go home. Almost 450,000 acres had been burned. It was like entering a ghost town, and I felt a spirit of reverence. This was now holy ground. Many hundreds of people had lost lifetimes of possessions, but true to my dream, my house was untouched by the fire. Charred leaves littered my yard, and everything inside the closed-up house had a film of ash on it, but it was whole. It had remained standing.

Like me.

The beautiful thing about wildfire is not just its awe-inspiring power and force, but the legacy it leaves behind. Fire is a gift to nature. Forests, after a time, need fire, and they even grow back greener and healthier after being incinerated and blackened into moonscapes beyond recognition. Life returns, even more vibrantly than before.

Ten days after coming home, a judge declared my marriage dissolved. Burned to the ground. The “Summer of the Fire” holds many meanings and lessons for me. It was literally a refiner’s fire in my life, and it blessed me with an even more sure knowledge that I am known, and that all things are in the Master’s hands.

It has been more than five years since that summer, and I was recently in Show Low on post-divorce business. I turned the music off in the car, so that I could drive in silence down the more than half-hour stretch of road that borders the charred forest. It filled me with hope to see that there is life again. There is green. Evidence of the destruction is still present, but not so glaring as it once was. I think the same is true of me. And, I like to believe that the mountain in me, will keep on springing forth with renewed life, right along with the White Mountains of Arizona, for we were burned together.