THAT'S A FIRE
DRAPER’S PAPER ROUTE
THAT’S A FIRE
by Adam Carroll Draper
Stef and I made a fire in the back yard last night, using the pile of decaying wood that I have gathered for years, recently augmented by this, that and the other dead limb or twig or knotted mess hauled there to burn because it was so rotted the chipper would not take it. We made s’mores. (By the way, Godiva Chocolate is a lot better that Hershey’s). I sat back with a plastic glass of wine from a box, and stared into the embers of my life.
The fire made me think of Eddie Murphy’s uncle, setting their back yard on fire every Fourth of July, saying, “Now that’s a fire, Gus!”
Stefanie just rolls her eyes now. “Can you come up with something else to say?”
I laughed because the other thing I was thinking about was Eddie’s aunt falling down the stairs again. “Help me, Jesus! I half way there, Lord!”
Stef and I have been getting our house ready to sell for the past year. Those who know me are only too aware that this is the equivalent of the moon landing for Stefanie. One small step for a man, one giant leap for his wife (who has somehow managed to refrain from murder). I bought this house from my parents almost twenty-five years ago, but I have lived here on and off since I was fifteen. Do you remember Vincent Price saying something about “the funk of forty thousand years” in Thriller?
How do you box that? You don’t! You destroy. You preserve. You contain. You sell stuff on line. You dodge your wife throwing shoes at you, like Eddie’s mom did!
“You missed me, @%#*&!” (Think it; don’t say it – as my friend, Eleanor, was taught by her father).
The not funny at all part is the extinction level potentialities hurtling towards me like the near miss asteroid NASA recently failed to spot. Ok, it feels like that, or it is like living in a war zone. I am still fighting the daily battles of lawyering, but I must leave them in medias res to rush headlong into hauling drywall or roots to the dump – or to figure out how to pay for plumbers and electricians (O my God!).
By the way, how it is that the self-help plumbing videos don’t ever quite prepare you for the fact that no pipe ever fits quite right. Too tight. Too loose. It can’t just be me! Well, my wife does not like water collecting under new bathroom vanities and stuff. Go figure.
Our bills are not going anywhere!
I woke up at four in the morning the other day. Panic had set in. I prayed. Stef prayed for me. Yeah, my frenzied, Bill the Cat, tumult with the covers that suddenly had to be off of me woke her, too – oddly. All my years of meditation on the sweet words of the Lord bidding me to be still and know that he is God were… out the window.
I knew I was under attack, but there was no denying the reality of the havoc. That’s the difficulty, of course. Somewhere, I remembered Jesus asking me, “Is your faith in your experience or me, Adam?” At that moment, my faith was in a primal scream (inside myself, I did not yawp… this time). After Stef prayed over me, I took some deep breaths and began praising God in the storm. There was nothing else to do. I remember thinking that this is one of those moments and the Lord deserved me to resolve that I would not give in to panic. I refused to worship the enemy! All those songs, all those prayers rose from somewhere.
I went back to sleep!
Later on that day, I was driving a load of mulch home, and the peace that passeth understanding came over me. It came with the realization that I was made for this moment. In all the world and in all of man’s puny history, this was a quark-sized event. But not for me. Emmanuel means “God with us!” I remembered.
“And lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
I have set my face towards the prize and I will not be deterred. I have no sense of Harry exhorting, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead!”
No, I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. No turning back.
If you got anything out of this missive, please give it a thumbs up, comment and/or share it. It helps. I sincerely appreciate that you took the time to read this.