When the Fire Rages
Letting Go of the Plan, and Holding Onto the Promise
Last night, I fought sleep. I fought physically peeling myself off the couch and going to bed. It felt like if I stayed there—on the sofa, in the stillness—maybe time would hold still too. Maybe today wouldn’t have to come.
Eventually, I dozed off. And I made myself get up and go to bed, hoping that a good night’s sleep might make today a little easier to face.
Then 2 a.m. brought the most horrific migraine—and sleep slipped away.
Eventually, the sun began to rise. Light streamed through my window, signaling what I’d tried to delay: Today had arrived. And I was awake to face it—headache and all.
Today marks three full years. Three years of loss. Three years of immense grief. Three years of facing trauma I never imagined walking through.
Three years of putting one foot in front of the other and confronting every shadow, every monster grief and trauma brought to my path. Three years of acknowledging them, learning from them, and releasing them.
I heard early on in my widowhood journey that at some point, there would come a time where everything gets burned down. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what that meant. I assumed it was about letting go of the life we had—the routines, the traditions, the future we thought was ours.
But now I know it goes deeper than that.
It’s not just letting go of the life you had. It’s letting go of the version of you who existed in it.
The Fire Wasn’t New
This wasn’t the first fire I had walked through.
When I was a child, our house caught fire. I remember standing on the sidewalk as flames billowed from the windows of the playroom—the very room I’d been in just hours before. The glow lit up the night sky, and I remember the feeling: disbelief, disorientation, fear.
In the days that followed, we returned to what was left. I walked through the soot-covered ruins of the only home I’d ever known, looking for something—anything—that could remind me it had once been real. A melted doll. A scorched photograph. A charred frame from the wall.
I wasn’t searching for toys. I was searching for connection. For proof that I hadn’t imagined the life that once filled that space.
And eventually, we rebuilt. Brick by brick, room by room, we started over.
But the memory stayed with me—how quickly everything you think is permanent can be reduced to ashes. How rebuilding doesn’t mean recreating what once was.
It means starting again, with what’s left, and trusting that it's enough for something beautiful.
Now, decades later, I find myself standing in the ashes again. But this time, it’s not my childhood home that’s burned.
It’s me.
What Burned
Externally, everything changed.
I lost friendships. Burn.
I sold a house. Burn.
Then I moved. Burn.
Then I moved again. Burn.
I closed a business. Burn.
I started a new job. Burn.
I wrote a book. Burn.
I found a new church. Burn.
This year, the government even deemed me "single" instead of "widow." Burn.
All while the fire inside me was tearing through the parts of me that could no longer stay. It wasn’t destruction for the sake of chaos. It was a holy dismantling. A purification.
The fire was consuming what needed to die so that something new could live.
And I didn't know it at the time, but it was grace.
Somewhere in the middle of that fire, the support started to fade too. The casseroles stopped. The check-ins grew quieter. People stopped asking how I was doing—not because they were cruel, but because life kept moving.
For them, it was just something that happened. A hard moment in their timeline. But for me, it changed everything about the way my path was positioned.
My path changed, but I still carried the old one with me, like an anchor.
I kept dragging it along—out of habit, out of hope, maybe even out of fear that if I let it go, I’d lose the last of what once was. And yet, with each step, that anchor grew heavier. The silence from others became its own kind of grief. Not just the loss of my person, but the loss of being remembered in my pain. The loss of being seen.
And that’s the part no one prepares you for—the moment when grief becomes something private. When it’s no longer shared or acknowledged, and you carry it quietly, like a scar under your clothes. You go to work. You smile. You show up. But something inside you still smolders, waiting to be named.
The Sacred Pause
In Jewish tradition, when someone dies, the family sits shiva—a seven-day period of intentional mourning. They stop everything. They sit in the grief. They allow the pain to be fully felt, fully honored.
It’s not rushed. It’s not hidden. It’s sacred.
That practice has stayed with me—because it speaks of a God who allows space for sorrow.
I think that’s where a lot of us miss the invitation.
We don’t know what to do with grief that lingers. Grief that doesn’t wrap up neatly in a few weeks or months. Eventually, people stop showing up. They assume you’re okay now. That you’ve moved on. That the worst is behind you.
But the truth is, many days the silence around you grows louder than the grief within you. And yet—even here—God draws near.
He stays.
He remembers.
He honors the ache that others have forgotten.
We want to move on. We want to fix it. We want to heal already.
But sometimes, the holiest thing you can do is sit in the ashes and wait for God to breathe.
Grief is not something you muscle through. It’s something you surrender to. And in the surrender, God begins to re-form what was broken.
When the Fire Quieted
Now, the fire doesn’t rage like it used to. But it still smolders.
And in that space—in the low, smoky stillness of what’s left behind—I’ve begun to see something else:
I’d still been clinging to the plan.
I had let go of the past. I had faced the grief. But I hadn’t released the belief that I could still somehow control the outcome.
I was still trying to rebuild a future in my own strength. Still trying to force the broken pieces into a story that made sense to me.
The more I tried to cling to the plan, the more exhausted I became. Because it wasn’t working. It wasn’t fitting.
God had dismantled the old so He could give me something new, and I was still clinging to blueprints from a life that no longer existed.
Letting Go of the Plan
Letting go of the plan doesn’t mean giving up. It doesn’t mean you don’t care. It means you’re finally starting to trust the Builder more than the blueprint.
And that’s what God has been teaching me.
Healing doesn’t always follow a timeline.
Redemption doesn’t always come the way you expect.
Sometimes it takes longer.
Sometimes it looks different.
Sometimes it feels like nothing is happening at all.
But the promise remains.
Holding Onto the Promise
God has promised healing. He has promised redemption. He has promised that beauty will rise from ashes.
Isaiah 61:3 says He will “give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”
This isn’t a vague hope. It’s a promise sealed in the faithfulness of God.
So I’m learning to hold onto that.
Even when I don’t know what’s next. Even when I still feel the weight of what I’ve lost. Even when I’m tempted to rush the process or prove that I’m okay.
Because I’m not building my life around a plan anymore.
I’m building it on a promise.
And in the clearing—where the fire has quieted, where the ashes have settled—I can finally see it:
Something is growing.
It’s tender.
It’s new.
It’s not fully formed.
But it’s there.
Like the foundation of that rebuilt house so many years ago—fresh, unmarked, full of unknowns but strong in its structure—I know this is just the beginning again.
And that’s enough for today.
If You’re In the Fire…
Maybe you’re still in the thick of it. Maybe everything around you is still burning, still shaking.
If that’s you, I want to gently remind you: You’re not doing anything wrong. This isn’t a failure of faith. It’s a refining.
Let it burn. Let God strip away what cannot stay. Let Him rebuild you with something stronger.
And when you’re ready to step into the clearing—when the fire settles and the silence returns—know that He will be there.
Still holding the promise.
Still whispering hope.
Still making all things new.
