Up in flames.

Saturday started out as a good day. Farmer's Market, a nap with the kids. I hear Mc in the other room telling me there is smoke outside. I look out and see the neighbors having a party and assume they are BBQing. I walk out front and there are huge black smoke clouds. I can see the flames from a house five houses down the street.

There were SO many people on the street. People from all over. Watching this house and everything in it, burning. What seemed the most odd to me; how this became like a community "event". People I had never seen before flocking to this house, bringing their small children and caravanning from who knows where, to watch. Couples holding hands hopping the fireman's hose to get closer to the action. This human chaos, the "train wreck effect" was something I had never experienced. The he said/she said of what happened and the neighborhood  alive with people wanting to catch a glimpse and Facebook what was happening within walking distance of where we live.

Sierra was one of the girls who lived in the house. She needed shoes so I walked a pair down to talk to her. She seemed noticeably calm. Her dogs and her car were safe- unlike her roommate's truck that was burned in the carport (too dark to really see in the picture). Everything she owned was either ruined by fire or smoke. They were home when the fire started on their back patio and before they knew it, their house, the fence and the tree in their yard were engulfed.Those people woke up today with nothing. A life moving forward that would now be described in terms of "post-fire" and "pre-fire".

Heartbreaking. I couldn't help but think what would happen and how I would feel to watch as everything I owned- baby books, wedding albums, journals, important papers and all those things that have been accumulated over a lifetime, were being washed down the street in ash. Those things can never be replaced or replicated. We got a chance to contribute at church today all after a Sunday School lesson centered on "rescuing" those around us. Poignant and humbling.

I drive by this house multiple times a day. Today, on the way to church it looks like the owners had been there trying to sort through anything that they could save. Piles of wet, charred belongings on the front lawn. It's a good reminder. A good way to re-center and to feel blessed that our strivings to be better, and do better, are usually voluntary and prompted without the destructive flames of house fire hurrying us to make the choice of what we value most.