God’s Prescribed Fires

My stress level had reached its peak.  

If ever I was at my wits’ end, it was that morning one year ago when I woke up in a house I didn’t want to live in anymore on a mattress resting on the floor among endless stacks of packed and half-packed boxes.  Not a stick of furniture remained anywhere in the house.  Every table, chair, sofa and bed frame was loaded in a moving truck that was sitting in the driveway — a moving truck we were paying for daily, even though we didn’t have anywhere to take it.

Because we couldn’t close on the house we were selling.  Again.  One problem after another, one delay after another, one miscommunication after another, and we had finally gone to the closing table thinking this nightmare was almost over.  Only to have it all fall apart again.

We had a beautiful little house, the perfect house for our family, in the perfect little town, waiting patiently for us 21 miles away.  It was empty, ready to move into, begging for the Holt family to come and make it home, but we couldn’t close on the new house until we closed on the old, and, through absolutely no fault of our own, we could not seem to close on our old house to save our lives.  

It was a special kind of despair I felt that morning.  God help me, I was so overwhelmed.  What were we supposed to do?  Unload the truck?  We couldn’t rent it indefinitely!  And I think I expected all of it to just start crumbling anyway — the poor buyers of our old house to quit trying, the sellers of the new house to finally admit they were tired of waiting — and the house we wanted would be lost to us and we would be plunged back into that miserable world of scouring realty sites and spending our weekends looking for houses, and the even more miserable world of keeping our own house spotless at all times in case we got a call about a showing.  With any luck we could get another offer quickly, sign another contract, and start this whole nightmarish closing process all over again.

I was low that morning.  I mean really low.  My faith was about as weak as it has ever been and God felt so distant and He seemed so disinterested.  He could fix this!  I knew that!  And yet He didn’t.  And it seemed the sting of His neglect was more devastating, more confusing, than the pain of our situation. 

Because it wasn’t just the house.  Honestly, when is it ever just one thing?  Usually it’s a whole series of problems that bring us to our breaking point, and then it can be a silly, even insignificant thing that finally pushes us over the edge.  

Not that our house uncertainties were insignificant.  It felt like homelessness, though I realize it wasn’t as bad as that.  We were very blessed to have a roof over our heads, but it didn’t eliminate the awful feeling of being unsettled and misplaced.  

It’s just that we had already been through so much.  The worst of it was behind us now.  We had found the Lord faithful and we had moved on.  But like a wound that is healing, but is still tender to the touch, I think my spirit was so sensitive, and these issues with the house seemed magnified a thousand times over to a heart and mind that was still delicate and tender to the touch.

But back to that morning a year ago.  I laid there, not sleeping, staring at the floor, the boxes, the ceiling.  Should I unpack?  Should I see if I could find enough unpacked food and cookware to whip up a breakfast?  Should we just wait?  Our buyers’ mortgage company insisted they were trying to resolve the problem, but they were being characteristically vague in everything they told us.  It was just hard to have hope this would still go through.

“Do you mind if I go for a drive?” I asked my husband, who was home only because we were supposed to be moving today. My husband is self-employed, mind you, and self-employed people don’t get paid vacation days. 

Sigh.

Now my husband knows what I mean when I say I’m going for a drive.  It really has nothing to do with getting from one place to another — it’s about getting alone with God, because with four children it’s not always so easy to do that, and sometimes I need a place I can go and really pour out my heart — the good, the bad, and the ugly — without reserve.  

I wasn’t even sure where I was going when I left the house, but I ended up at a local nature preserve, hoping somehow a long walk could at least settle my nerves.  It was a little cool that morning, but the sun was bright enough to make it bearable, and so I walked fast and prayed hard, pouring my heart out to a God who seemed bent on remaining silent and aloof.

But the walking did me some good.  A little exercise helped burn off a powder keg of excess emotion, if nothing else, though I still found myself so frustrated and confused by a God who just refused to answer my prayers.

Because that’s really the way I viewed His response to me.   Or His lack of response to me.  I mean, I knew He could work this out!  I knew He could turn this situation around in a heartbeat!  

And yet He didn’t.  He just sat there.  Doing nothing.  Watching me writhe and struggle, and making no effort to intervene.

I was done walking, but I loathed the thought of going home and facing the moving truck that held most of my belongings and the boxes and the house without even a chair to sit on, and so I decided to drive the road that weaves through some of the more remote, more heavily wooded areas of the park.  

Now this was early spring, and though things were beginning to green up just a little, it really wasn’t very pretty and springlike just yet.  The trees were still mostly bare and I could easily see some distance through the woods on both sides. 

And as I drove, at the top of a knoll in the midst of the trees to my left I caught sight of a wisp of smoke coming up from the ground.

Whoa.  Smoke means fire.  And fire in the woods is not good.  

I slowed my car to a crawl.  Should I call somebody?  It was still fairly early in the morning.  Had anybody seen this?  Was it the remnants of a fire that had been put out, or the evidence of a fire that was just beginning?

I crept forward, still trying to decide if this was something I needed to panic about or not, when I edged over the top of the slope and the broad gorge to my left came into view.  There, dotted throughout the ravine, were literally dozens of small, controlled fires, all emitting little trails of smoke.  

I might have been alarmed.  In fact, I was alarmed for a second or two.  But just ahead of me was a park truck and there, walking among all those little fires, was a man in some sort of strange fire gear.  He wasn’t rushed or flustered or concerned.  Instead, he was calmly shuffling about, totally undisturbed by his observer, bending to check fires here or there like he was just stopping to smell flowers on the forest floor.  

And I said to myself, OUT LOUD, “Well.  I guess he knows what he’s doing.”

And my own words struck me so hard it nearly took my breath away. 

Because, to my untrained eye, the entire forest looked ready to erupt into flame, and yet I could look at this mysterious man in the funny suit and fully believe he had the situation under control. 

So why was it so impossible for me to look at my house situation and believe God could have it completely under control as well?

 

So if you’ve never done any study into “prescribed fires”, it’s actually pretty fascinating.  I’ve known since I was a child that many parks and nature preserves do controlled burns through their forestland, but this whole event prompted me to do a little more research.  A prescribed fire can burn off excessive underbrush and fallen tree material, which can really help in the event of a forest fire just by limiting fuel sources for the flames. 

But forestry experts will also use prescribed fires to help attract wildlife into an area.  Trees like oak and hickory are a great food source for deer, squirrels, and other wildlife, but they will sometimes fail to flourish because of faster-growing trees that take up forest space.  But, amazingly enough, oaks and hickories stand up well to the high temperatures of a prescribed burn, so forestry personnel can burn off weaker trees to make more space for the higher food-producers, which naturally draws more wildlife into the forest.

Prescribed burns also clear out underbrush and dead plant materials enough to allow sunlight to hit the forest floor in places that may not have seen sunlight in years.  Seeds that have literally lain dormant for decades will often begin to sprout and native plant species long forgotten will begin to flourish again.

So my point?  Prescribed burns have a needful and beneficial purpose.  What can appear like dangerous, reckless disregard for nature can actually achieve good and healthy things in a forest.

Because prescribed burns are always done in a careful, calculated manner, under only the perfect conditions of temperature, moisture, and wind speed, and only by experts who never leave the fire unattended. 

See where I’m going with this?  

I don’t know all that God is doing sometimes in the craziness of our lives.  I mean, I love it when his purposes are clear, but, let’s be real — how often does that really happen?  Sometimes bad or discouraging or frustrating things happen and there seems to be no rhyme or reason for it at all.

And yet God never loses control of the situation.  If He allows fire, it is no doubt for the purpose of accomplishing good things.  He only allows it under the right conditions, and never once does He wander off, leaving the chaos of our lives unattended or unchecked.

And sometimes I just have to trust that He knows what He’s doing, that what looks so frightening and so out-of-control and so dangerous to me is never once beyond His power and authority

He knows what He’s doing.  If I can just learn to trust Him.

Incidentally, the truck would have to be unloaded and returned and we would have to wait an agonizing two and a half weeks more.  But then everything changed on a dime.  

“Can you close tomorrow?”

We could.  And we did.  

And, just like that, the nightmare was over.  We moved into our perfect little house in the perfect little town and I realized the God who had seemed so far away and so disinterested had not been neglecting me after all.

He was working the whole time.  Always in control.  Always concerned. 

Always managing the fire.

 

 

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