As a general rule, I’m a logical thinker and I’m not easily panicked. But I recall a day when I did panic. It was almost thirty years ago in Valdosta, Georgia. Floyd was in the United States Air Force at the time, and we were stationed at Moody Air Force Base. We lived in a mobile home trailer approximately one mile from base. Toby was three years old, and Jamie was one. (Michelle hadn’t been born yet.)
It was winter, and we kept the fireplace going round the clock to keep the trailer warm. We had tons of firewood from the trees we’d cut down to maneuver our trailer onto the plot of land where it sat. When the ashes got full in the fireplace, we scooped them into a large metal can, and once they’d cooled, we emptied the can into a brown paper sack and hauled it out to the dumpster.
Floyd worked second shift. Before going to work one afternoon, he emptied the ash can into the brown paper sack, re-filled the can with hot ashes from the fireplace, and added more wood to the fire. But he didn’t take the bag out. He said, “It’s got lots of room for more ashes, so we’ll take it out tomorrow.”
Little did we know, all the ashes he dumped from the can weren’t cool yet. But God knew. The bag still had some hot coals in it. And brown paper is a great insulator, so the hot coals didn’t cool. Apparently, those hot embers gradually worked their way to the dry paper that housed them. Well, I usually went to bed around 9:00 and was asleep by 9:15.
That particular night, I put the kids to bed around 8:30 and got ready for bed myself. But instead of crawling under the covers, I decided to write a letter to my mother, who lived in California. So about 9:00, I settled on the bed with a pen and notepad to write. I left my bedroom door open because I enjoyed seeing the glow of the fire coming from the living room.
Around 9:15, I looked out the door and saw an incredibly bright orange glow. I thought, Oo, that’s much brighter than usual. I’d better check it out. So I got up to check the fire. That brown paper bag was engulfed in flames. That is when I panicked.
I screamed. My three-year-old son, who obviously wasn’t asleep yet, called to me from his bedroom. “Mommy, what’s the matter?” I said, “Shut up and go to sleep.” Now what parent in their right mind tells their child to go to sleep when there is a fire in the house? To make matters worse, a mobile home trailer is little more than kindling itself, so I had to move fast or the whole trailer would go up in flames. And mobile homes are built so that the master bedroom is on one side of the trailer and the children’s bedrooms are on the other. Therefore, I had to go through the living room, past the fire to reach my toddlers.
So did I run to my children and get them out while the fire was small and I could easily get by it? No. I ran in circles while that fire consumed the brown paper bag. Forcing myself to calm down and get a grip on my circumstances, I dashed into the kitchen and grabbed an empty pitcher, thrusting it under the faucet and turning on the water. With the sink full of dirty dishes, I couldn’t collect too much water in a horizontal pitcher. But I got what I could, turned off the water, and ran into the living room, dumping it on the inflamed sack. The fire sizzled and died down quite a bit, but since it was contained to the brown sack, I repeated it two more times until the fire was out.
God was surely watching out for us that day. Most days I was asleep by 9:15 pm, but this particular day, I decided to write a letter to my mom. God controlled that fire long enough for me to collect my wits and extinguish the flames. The fire remained contained to the bag. If it had spread, within minutes that trailer would have been consumed in flames. And if I had closed my bedroom door, by the time I realized the trailer was on fire, I would not have been able to reach my children. We would have lost them. God protected us all.