Beauty For Ashes

I struggled to take in televised images of the horrific firestorm playing on Mom’s jumbo flat screen. My home in Paradise, CA, and its surrounding area was on fire and all my husband and I could do was watch helplessly from my parent’s home in the Bay Area. Mom and Dad had troubles of their own, and God brought us here to help.

Terry and I held hands watching churning smoke billows rise into columns of white and red flame now consuming the forest. I watched until I could not take any more and stepped away to pray.

My mother’s TV room was cramped with three recliners, and two large end tables crammed into it. The furniture was displaced six weeks before to accommodate the hospital bed, medical supplies, and commode my father was sentenced to since he began Hospice Care. I turned my back on the unthinkable sight playing out on the television behind me and walked to the opposite end of the room to tend to Dad who lay feverish and dying. He was completely unaware that my world was on fire just twelve feet in front of him. I felt his hot forehead and prayed, “Lord, I don’t know how to handle this, but right now my Dad is on fire, and I am right where I am supposed to be.” Dad was my priority and I comforted myself in that truth the rest of the day and into the next as I stayed by his side. I prayed for Paradise and its citizens. I prayed for my husband and the firefighters and first responders who risked their lives while their own homes were being consumed by fire. I prayed for Dad who was fighting the greatest battle of his life, and for Mom who stared numbly at her precious husband who lay dying by her side.

My father died peacefully on November 9, 2018

“To give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness…” (Isaiah 61:3, NKJ)