“Why am I crying?” I wondered as tears streamed down my cheeks. “I haven’t even lost anything.”
I was sitting in a room of survivors who were all members of Paradise Evangelical Free Church. Thankfully, everyone in their church family had escaped from the Paradise, California fire. The fire had split and gone around their church building. But sadly, out of the 72 families in the church, only a few still had a home.
I felt embarrassed to be crying. I didn’t even know any survivors personally.
The tears had begun when everyone started singing “In Christ Alone”.
“Till He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand”.
Many survivors even rose to their feet while others comforted each other. The atmosphere in the room was heavy.
I had heard stories and lived among the thick, brown smoke for a few days, but there was something about sitting among members of Paradise Evangelical Free Church, singing with them and listening to their stories that finally caused the emotional well to break within me.
“There was fire on either side of the road and so I just drove right through it. Thankfully my tires didn’t blow. I could feel the heat.” One woman shared.
One of the members who had heard her home was standing said she had been counseled to fight against “survivor guilt”. Why was my home not touched and my neighbor lost everything? Even with her home still standing she would still be facing the long recovery process since no one was even allowed to go into Paradise and there was no timeline of when that would be.
Other survivors wondered allowed about if they could get back in the church or their home to clean out the perishable food. Dan advised them to tape up the fridge and throw it away. It was too risky to even open it.
One of the hardest parts of this type of situation is not know where their neighbors and church friends had dispersed too. Pastor Al read the names of the families of the church and shared where they were staying. Many families were in other cities of California and even Oregon. I could tell there was such a relief to know everyone was living, but a sense of sadness to thinking that many of these people would never come back and all of them faced the struggle of finding a new normal.
I saw a couple holding hands and leaning on each other. You could see on their face that the memories of the fire and all they had lost were weighing heavy on their hearts.
As the meeting came to a close, my teammate Katrina hugged me and comforted me by saying the tears were completely normal. She encouraged me with the fact that I have been in Crisis Response over a year now and have seen survivors come out the other end. I started to get images of Heather sharing that hurricane Harvey was a “scary beautiful blessing”. I heard Alex share that He was initially angry at God, but then realized had shared “God hadn’t left me… He sent me you guys!” I have seen hearts transformed, relationships blossom, communities come together.
Katrina moved on to talk with survivors and I stood there awkwardly. What do I do?!