“There’s no easy way to say this. It’s gone. It’s all gone.”
The words of the fireman that early April morning could barely be heard above the roar of the flames, the sirens of fire trucks still arriving, the crackle of burning timbers as sparks rose high into the night sky.
The fisherman statue that had once stood sentinel at the entrance, which had been removed to the building where it could be restored, was lost in that fire.
The beautiful parade-worthy Model A that dad had painstakingly brought to life, which soon would carry he and mom proudly about, was slated instead to bear the patina blotches of rusted metal and heat-twisted wheels.
But last night, at sunset, looking up at the light splashed across the heavens, there were as many reasons to smile as there seemed an unlimited expanse of sea and sky.
Painted in the brilliant hues of the setting sun, the heavens were airbrushed with color, the artist’s portrait in the clouds above mirrored in the ripple-less water below, the so still surface reflecting back its beauty even while messaging peace and calm, confidence and hope.
“Shattered dreams have the power to change our lives for good,” wrote Larry Crabb in his book “Shattered Dreams: God’s Unexpected Path to Joy.”
It’s what the spirit-troubled Psalmist David expressed in Psalm 43:3 “O send out your light and your truth. Let them lead me….”
It’s what a friend of mine messaged me, perhaps quoting another: “God takes us down paths we never wanted to go, with obstacles we never wanted to face, to bring us to a place we never want to leave.”
Through it all, I’ve come to that place.
The light from that same setting sun, the cry of David in his dark place to see that light once again, to be led by that light, was like the light that shone through the window last night on the gift I gave her that hangs on the wall:
“And suddenly you were my everything, and I was home.”
