Firestorm

My lungs are filled with smoke, stomach is upset, and eyes water and burn from the fumes. I can't help but wonder...where is this coming from? Is it a tree, or grass? Or could it be a teddy bear, or stuffed panda? Worse still, could it be someone's house? Who's life, who's memory, is blowing through the wind...?

Southern California has been ravished by wild fires for years...but it's finally hitting me close to home. My current stomping ground are in SoCal, much different than my true home in Colorado. Far enough away from the fires that I cannot see flames I am still close enough to be swarmed with smoke. I wish I could say as much for my friends. A wild fire recently knawwed on their school. Dorms as well as faculty homes and school building are lost. A friend of mine called one of these dorms their home. Houses throughout the area also fed and continue to feed the beasts that make this land their home. That feeling of sickness...it's not just from the smoke filling my lungs. It's from knowing my friends were in a gym surrounded by flames. It's in knowing hundreds of people have no place to return to, nothing to remind them of past adventures, no stuffed animal to cling to for comfort, no bed to return to in an effort to sleep away this nightmare. It's heartbreak. Heartbreak for those who have lost everything, left only with the clothes on their back and their family and friends. I sit in my dorm, with my computer on my lap...wondering. What if that was me? What if fire swept my school? Why am I fortunate enough not to have been directly hit by this "firestorm"? Yet that's all I can do...is wonder. I cannot empathize, I have never experienced this horror first hand...and pray I never do. So, I cannot empathize, what am I supposed to do...?

How am I supposed to focus on class when this ongoing tragic tail burns in my back yard? So many people are displaced and suffering, and I'm supposed to worry about school? Why can't I leave, go fight these fires myself!? I want to save the world...but I can't....I can't. So I'm left...trying to live my life, working on school work, and doing the little things I can. Donate money, maybe a cd or movie. I can give my friends a hug when I see them, and above all I can pray. Pray for my friends, pray for strangers, pray for that which was lost and that which can still be saved, and pray for peace and community and love and grace. I am firm in my faith and yet this still feels so minor, so helpless and intangible....i know it's not...but I want to save the world...God's the only one who can do that one.

So where am I going with this? Honestly...no where. I can't sleep. I can't tell if the sting in my eyes is from smoke or exhaustion. My heart is broken for those who are grieving and in shock...my mind races with images of flame engulfed scenary and pain and anguish ridden faces...my dreams are filled with heroism of fire fighters and RD's who tell the firemen to save the dorms instead of his home...these fires fit their name...wild. Only God knows what to expect next...so I bring it to you Lord. Heal the broken hearted, give rest to those who cannot sleep. This is just a small glimpse of the brokenness of this world...we will praise you in the good and the bad.

This is yet another reminder of how fragile this life is....

Remember, Life is short...don't waste it....Pura Vida and Carpe Diem.

Love and Peace,
~matty p