Here is the reality of living in the mountains.
There are a lot of trees.
Stick with me here, don’t give me a teenage eye roll, this is an important thing to note because with lots of trees come fires. It’s a classic combo, like peanut butter and jelly, fudge and ice cream, or as my fourteen year old just informed me, sour cream and onion chips with caramel syrup.
Right?!
Yikes.
Anyway… Sorry, can’t get that out of your mind now, can you? Me neither. I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit but, I’m going to press forward because I can do hard things.
🙂
Fire danger, in the summer before monsoon hits, is real. It is a BIG DEAL. There are always a few tense weeks, no matter how much snow we got that winter, where people start to wonder if our town is going to burn to the ground and we are going to end up in history books a thousand years from now like Pompeii.
Fire danger signs dot the side of roads all over town. We breath a collective sigh of relief when we see it on LOW. As it creeps across the board to HIGH we start to fidget. Round about the time it makes the jump to EXTREME, we hit our knees and start praying for rain.
It’s unsettling, feeling like your fate is in the hands of something you can’t control. We humans love being in control, don’t we. There are a few brave souls who declare themselves control freaks, with or without some measure of pride. Really, every one of us should own it. We want things the way we want them. And some of us, I’m not pointing any fingers but we know who we are, get a little cranky when things don’t go the way we want. Some of us, again, not judging, on occasion throw a good old fashioned tizzy fit when things don’t go the way we want them to.
Is it bad to want control?
That’s a good question. What do you think?
When pondering a question like that, I have to consider how it feels when I’m trying to control everything, and everyone, in my world.
Because the whole point of doing the things we do in this life is to feel something, don’t you think? We want to feel happy, we want to feel accomplished, we want to feel loved, we want to feel needed. Basically, we want to feel good.
But know what I’ve decided?
Controlling things – or rather, trying to control things, since actually doing it is dang near impossible – is the just… the worst.
It’s exhausting.
I THINK I know what will make everything perfect and shiny and cotton candy flavored, but I really don’t. I’m not that smart y’all.
And that’s okay.
I’m not supposed to control everything.
I’m supposed to learn to let it go.
(No, I’m not going to break into song, but admit it, you almost did, didn’t you??)
I’d rather let things be what they will be. I’d rather leave it all in the hands of someone wiser, who knows exactly how this world should turn. Someone who loves us all perfectly and therefore will give us exactly what we need.
Even if those things are hard. Even if they are wild and volcanic and super stinky. Even if the heat is on as the fire is raging and I am sweating bullets. Even if disaster feels imminent.
I’d rather choose to believe everything that happens is part of the plan and that it is going to work together for our good.
There is good in everything.
Everything can be beautiful.
