Waiting

There is a time and a place for everything.  Each and every major event, change or catastrophe has a time and a place.  The reasoning as to why, especially when innocent lives and treasured possessions are involved, is usually a mystery.  Such is the case of the raging Waldo Canyon fire that beckons ever closer to my doorstep, the wind now the director of tragedy.  The blaze began just yesterday and has remained a force to be reckoned with, already having destroyed 2,000 acres.  When the plumes of smoke transformed into a fiery orange, momentarily illuminating the sky, an eeriness swept over the foothills.  Never in my 20 some years have I ever sat so close to what looked like impending doom.  

I still have yet to fully grasp the gravity of the whole scenario: fire begins, evacuations next, packing up my room and what I can not live without, and of course the waiting.  Still in the voluntary evacuation zone, I remain at home with my family...waiting, waiting with cars packed ready to go, ready to leave our house behind if the time comes.  Thankfully, I had just finished packing for New Zealand so I had that part taken care of.  And my sister had just returned from Costa Rica (not quite what she wanted to come home to).

What happens in the next hour, 2 hours, 72 hours, is completely up in the air.  Never knowing how things are going to turn out in the end.  The waiting, waiting to leave, waiting for more updates, is like waiting for a ticking time bomb to go off.  But then it hits you: that whatever is going to happen is going to happen.  You save what you can and do all that you can.  The rest is up to God and nature.  

But, with 20 plus fires burning across the beautiful state of Colorado, it's hard to see the silver lining in the cloud (literally).  These cities, these mountains, my home, all seem to be going up in flames and little can be done.  But you slowly begin to realize that nature will, indeed run its course.  Homes and sadly lives may not be spared though, a tough pill to swallow for all.  

But, deep down, we all know these types of things are meant to happen.  Whether you want to call it fate, God, nature, or a lesson to learn, this fire and those elsewhere, are happening for a reason.  The cause may never be known and that is unsettling for the vast majority of people.  But maybe the underlying reasoning for this fire, this destruction, is to make room for new growth.  Maybe it really is “out with the old, in with the new.”  More often than not, getting rid of the old is a scary, frightening, and messy process.  

But without this destruction, maybe the new wouldn't be quite so stunningly beautiful, a breadth of fresh air, or a reassuring gesture that life does go on.  We may not know what is on the other side of the mountain, so to speak, or what the new will bring, but we do know, deep down, this is the natural cycle of life.  

It is the fear of the unknown, the fear of this change, whether that change be positive or negative.  Not quite sure of how things will turn out, we prepare, as best we can.  But when the preparing is over, the waiting begins.  And in that waiting, a knowingness comes forth: that waiting can only be done moment by moment.  As is life, we take each day, moment by moment, breadth by breath, living and loving just the same, sometimes waiting for the destruction to end and the construction to begin.  

Such is this fire a metaphor for this upcoming change in my own life.  In waiting for this change, this chance to go abroad for a semester, the days seem to pass ever so slowly and with the fire, an unsettling feeling has come over me.  But I realize that in this moment I can do no more than what I am doing.  I'm done preparing, and now I am waiting, waiting for this huge change in my life to happen.  If we live moment to moment, holding dear to our loved ones, our secureness, our presence with the moment, maybe the waiting is no more and our heart and mind open up to what we have in the present moment.