A fire burns deep…

I had the privilege of listening to my hubby preach last Sunday. We were at a local URC Church in Rochester, and we have visited there every quarter for the past five years. The people there are gentle, loving, supportive, and have become part of our extended church family.

It was to be our last visit there before we move, and we, or rather Ray, had prepared a service where we could say goodbye. When hubby got up to preach, he read from Ecclesiastes 3:

Linking this reading to Genesis 1 and 1 Thessalonians, he talked about cycles of life, and how we had come to a place and a time where we needed to mourn and say goodbye, and start afresh in a new place.

As he was talking through what he had prepared, I found myself thinking about a Y6 SATs paper I had once helped a child with in 2002, called ‘Spark of Life’.

I thought about the devastation of the recent forest fires a cousin had faced in Australia, of the heroic actions of the emergency services, and of the destruction of homes, both natural and man-made.

I sat, there at the front of the church, and silently wept. The hugeness of what we are about to do for Ray’s calling suddenly struck me like a bolt of lightning, starting my own personal, chaotic forest fire. We were leaving. This was the last time I would see these people who had prayed for us so lovingly and faithfully.

I cast a wide net, and having now lived in Kent for as long as I had in my childhood town of Cardiff, I have many people to say goodbye to, from churches I have belonged to, our wonderful neighbours, the scores of children who have entered my heart and life through my teaching career, colleagues who have become more than simply colleagues. I will be bereft. My fire is raging and will rage until we have moved. Then, as we unpack box after box, my ashes will settle.

My ashes will settle, and they will settle peacefully as I firmly believe we are doing the right thing. I will unpack my boxes until my ashes settle. I will play the piano until my ashes settle, listen to music, paint and journal until my ashes settle. I will read my Bible and pray, and amidst all of this the seeds of new friendship will start to shoot out their roots, and (I hope) my buds will grow and blossom.

And so the cleansing will come. The fire will destroy me and prepare in my heart new fertilised soil. It will help me to adapt, and I will come out stronger and taller, a little firmer in my faith.

For everything there is a season, and he has made everything beautiful in it’s time.