35 years...wow...

May 8, 1974, an 18 month old girl child climbed onto a boat, pulling on a detached gas line for leverage. Gas ran onto the concrete slab floor & close enough to the gas operated hot-water heater that the flame ignited the fumes. Up went the frail wooden structure with its tiny treasure hidden inside.

The fire raged; everything in its path was consumed. The child screamed. Her father frantically chopped at the wall, stuck his hands into the blazing hole, called her name & held his breath. Somewhere from the depths, the girl child emerged. Her father grabbed her and she rested, no longer afraid.

Rushing from the yard, the man desperately clung to the child, not knowing what to do or where to go. A woman came to him and spoke, "I am a nurse. You have to pack her in ice or her body will explode." Reaching a neighbor's door, he begged for a tub and ice - lots of ice. The streets were lined with neighbors bringing their freezers' contents to the neighbor's yard to pour over the child as requested. The man turned to thank the woman that had spoken the instructions he needed to hear...but she was gone...and no one else had seen her...

At the hospital, a doctor spoke. "We'll keep her comfortable, Mr. Hughes, but she's burned too badly. I'm afraid there's no chance to save your daughter." But what do doctor's really know anyway?

May 8, 2009, the girl child, now a woman, sits at her computer, typing out this blog. She has had a day unremarkable to most but in her heart she has rejoiced. Woman, wife and mother, everything she was never supposed to be, she has become.

So many people have commented on how tough it must have been being burned or crippled. And yet, she knows the secret. The scars, the missing limb, the physical pain really were nothing. What would they say if they knew those scars saved her life? Those years in & out of the hospital were the best part of her young life and when they were gone, she was lost.

Though the years were not kind, scars, amputation, abuse and neglect, by God's sovereign grace...she still stands. As she tucks her own tiny girl children into bed, she brushes back a tear and her heart whispers, "Thank you, God. Thank you for the fire."