Fire and Faith

I think there's a reason why Hell is depicted as fire. Fire is horrific and destructive. The State Fire Marshal told us that fire is violent and noisy. Our fire woke our neighbors with its noise. I hate to think of the terror our neighbors and our firefighters went through not knowing if that fire had touched us personally or just our stuff.

But Fire is also the Holy Spirit.  At church on Sunday, they announced a fundraising spaghetti supper to be held for us in two weeks. Knowing that we needed to be out of town for my niece's baby's baptism, where my daughter will become her godmother, I quickly flipped ahead in the book to see the date. It's not the date of the baptism but it IS the date of Pentecost. Pentecost - when the Holy Spirit came to the apostles in tongues of fire!  God has a quirky sense of humor.

I don't believe in coincidence, I believe in small miracles found every day. I believe that I'm being shown that that fire is bad but fire is good. I'm still looking forward to bonfires and s'mores. I won't let this fire stop me from being me. I'm thankful I didn't see it burning, I might not be able to feel this way if I had.

The kitchen fridge

I felt the need to share this.  A friend messaged me, and said "Been there, done that" and some encouragement.  I realized I'd started a blog post a long time ago, but never finished it or posted it...  It's relevant today, posting it exactly as I wrote it back then:

The Kitchen Fridge

A friend posted a picture on Facebook today, a picture of his former kitchen.  His house burned, and he lost everything that had been in that picture.

What strikes me first about this picture is the stuff on the fridge. It's not a magazine shot of some spotless photo shoot, it's a home... a place where you keep stuff.

Losing the kitchen sink isn't nearly as big a deal as losing all the little scraps on the fridge.

Home.

Home.

Home is an interesting word. We don't have the building we used to live in, but we have a home.  We picked up the Girl from college and brought her home. While she was at school, thought, she would refer to her dorm room as "home" - and I encouraged her in that.

Yesterday the kids and I went to the library. We got our library cards replaced (the first of MANY of those sorts of things, but we have our priorities!) They picked out some books, Teresa picking a couple of favorites (Fellowship of the Ring, Neil Gaiman "Neverwhere").

Then we went to the beach. The Winthrop town beach is a place where we spent a lot of time when they were younger. The kids stayed there while I went to Cumby's and picked up milk, went to House of Pizza and got two large pizzas. We took the pizzas home and had supper together.

The Little Things /revr4 5/20

It's so amazing how much our town EVERYONE wants to help.  And there's so much that we need!  Our immediate needs are taken care of by insurance, thank goodness.  And they've been great. I'm really uncomfortable with public fundraisers, because things are, so far, going smoothly. But everyone wants to help, so I'm going to smile and be gracious. There is a gofundme page, if you'd like to do that.  But SO many things are not easily replaced.  I've thought of a few of these types of things, and will update this post as I think of more.

We are currently at a hotel.  It's comfortable, suites not just a room, but not long term.  Most of the "things" we are not able to accept at this time, if you can just set them aside for now, that would be great.  I will try to keep this list updated with things we have been told about.  **date: 5/20 **

I've already mentioned the kids t-shirts - all those Winthrop activities, like Latin Club, Math Team, Robotics - to a couple of people.  I'm hoping that when we find time to go to Tabitha's Closet or Becky's Second Time Around, that we will find some donated ones.  Phillip wears XL t-shirts, and Teresa wears a L usually, but XL also works.  (Our Robotics teammates have said they are working on this.)

** we have two offers already.  You guys are amazing, and fast! Teresa's clarinet is no more.  We now have had THREE people offer a clarinet.  

Phillip had been collecting Transformers since he was six years old.  We've bought three new ones, so he can transform them and relax.  His first was "Red Alert" from about 2005/2006.  If you have OLD transformers, and were planning to donate/yardsale them, we'd love them.  

Our games closet had been full...  I needed to declutter those, but this was too drastic.  :)

We lost a *LOT* of books.  We don't expect to replace all of them... (Yikes, what a scary thought!) But there are some that I would like to have.  My mother got "Moo Baa La La La" for Teresa...   I'm going to think about which books we read over and over and over, and if you're looking to declutter your own kid's books, I'm happy to accept!  (Please don't go out and buy new.  We're happy with well-loved books, as ours were.  Teresa agreed with this, that all new books would not make it feel better, like well loved books would.)

The Monster at the End of this Book.  (My absolute favorite

The book of poems  - "Looking in and Other Stories" (a golden book, I believe.  Very old.)

-The Napping House (Phillip got this at a doc visit, we read it over and over)

-Stephen King books.  (Bob and I *EACH* had a copy of earlier books, once we got married just one copy..  LOL!)

Expect this section to get larger...  

Goedel, Escher, Bach.   (Again, in  those "wow, you, too" things from our dating days, we each had a copy!  Now down to 0.)

Bob's book.  Maybe I'll ask Cengage if he can get another copy.  

(Wow, the book list might need it's own list.)

** Thanks to Don Beattie for offering his information on our shared Ancestors.  I hadn't even thought about the genealogy paperwork we had... more amazing gifts being shared.

** need sleep.  I will continue this later, but thought I'd let folks know the kinds of things that are on my mind.  

Counting Blessings

We were in a hotel room in Boston, going to Teresa's graduation from Simmons.  Our cellphones started ringing, from Winthrop PD, around 5:30am.  Those are never good.  There was a fire at our property. The sound relief in his voice, the "Oh, thank god!"when he learned we were all away, was an indication that it was bad. 

It's bad.  It's gone.  It's not something you can even wrap your head around.  We waited until after graduation, and quick lunch, to tell the girl we couldn't even bring her "home" ...

But we were not there.  It wasn't the night before, when three of us would have been there.  It wasn't the night after, when six of us would have been there.  That's the biggest blessing of all.  I'm thankful that nobody was hurt fighting the fire, looking for us...  another blessing.

And I have to be careful about mentioning anything I need...  I'm looking forward to Teresa's graduation party tomorrow, which I believe is going to be a demonstration of loaves and fishes.  I love our town, everybody wants to help - it's definitely a blessing.

Each time I think of a loss, I just remember something good.  And our sense of humor will get us through this.  Even if it is a dark sense of humor at times.