Some things were left here during the fire that I can’t pick back up because ashes are like that. They are hard to pick up. There are silver linings and sharp edges. Tearing down walls inadvertently left me raw and exhausted and hopeful and terrified. I didn’t mean to face the places that I’d tucked away, but sometimes staying alive does that. It’s true. All we have is new and shiny. Also true, is we’ve had two middle of the night leaks, contractors still here weekly, and a yard full of trees but not hauled off. Life is new and also unsteady. Living is like that. I must be really living.

We are both:and. I did not stay in that fire. We have rebuilt. I left pieces of me in the ashes and what was buried beneath those pieces have shaken me. I don’t know exactly who I am underneath the layers of life, but I know somehow life chose me and I’m left wondering is it possible God would use the hot embers of an all consuming fire to save my life while it was taking so much of it away?