Fire and Prayers and Humble Amazement

Tonight my daughter and I returned home from a day of Christmas shopping to find a large portion of our neighbor's yard engulfed in flames right up against our fence. This neighbor, a very good friend of ours, is out of town. I knew all of the guys were probably not outside, where they usually spend the majority of their time, since the Heisman Trophy winner was being announced, literally at that moment. (Our guy won.) While I slammed my car in park outside the garage and ran in like lightning for my husband, my little nine-year-old daughter, generally as dainty as any good damsel in distress, had the wherewithal to fetch the fire extinguisher from the kitchen pantry. She ran it to the gate where she stood wisely, waiting for an adult to come and be the one to open it. That fire extinguisher (and her quick thinking, ABSOLUTELY) saved our neighbor's barn, which was the first (and mercifully the only) major structure to catch fire. (Thank you Dad for the extinguisher! It was a thoughtful and most useful "practical gift." It would have ALL been gone without it!) By that time my husband had called our other neighbor to drag out the garden hoses and they put the rest of it down together.

All I can say now is.......

WHEW!

It really does remind me just what grace really is. That God would bring together so many different aspects of awareness from each individual involved in a situation to bless it in the end is ......well, just humbling. From my Dad noticing our absence of an extinguisher three or four years ago to me driving by precisely when the fire had just started to spread. My boys pitched in with dog bowls full of water. I truly do believe with all my heart that it all came together that way just for this very night. There's a little bit of black grass and siding and a couple of melted bar stools (and lessons much better learned), but everything else was spared this day just before Christmas.

I'm not nearly eloquent enough to convey my gratitude.

Especially because I know things DON'T ALWAYS work out in the end. Sometimes homes do burn down during the holidays, divorces proceed because of a cheating spouse (yet another neighbor, for whom my heart is broken), and children spend yet another Christmas in the hospital miles and miles away from home and family.

IF YOU FEEL SO LED, WOULD YOU PLEASE PRAY FOR MY NIECE ASHLEY - AND FOR HER FAMILY.

Ashley has spent every one of her three Christmases since her birth in the hospital, with her mom and without her dad and sister and brother. And instead of getting easier, it's actually just the opposite. While other carefree kids crave the toys and goodies from Santa that most kids naturally do, she only wants home and the familiarity of people who are there to love her and enjoy her, rather than poke and prod and take her vitals every hour and otherwise help her in ways that she only has the understanding to interpret as painful. And though her family still finds so very much to be grateful for through it all, it only reminds me all the more how most of us have our health.

Most of us have some sort of family, however it's put together. Most of us have beds to sleep in and enough food to keep from starving and the ability to read a Bible if we will. And freedom still, for now. We really do have it very good.

So very, very, VERY good.

May you each have a blessed and peaceful and wonderful Christmas full of the love of an indescribably graceful Savior.