Fire, Fire

This past Monday morning was one of those moments for me.

At exactly 12:20 AM, I was jolted from sleep by a sound I had never heard before—a blaring horn repeating the words: “FIRE, FIRE.” This wasn’t the familiar beep of a low-battery smoke detector or the occasional alarm from burnt toast. This was urgent, piercing, unmistakable.

My senses instantly sharpened. I leaped out of bed and inhaled—wood smoke. The scent of something burning was undeniable. My husband grabbed our trembling dog, and I instinctively reached for my purse, passport, and whatever sense of composure I could muster. Throwing on a jacket and hat, we rushed outside into the cold.

And there it was—fire raging through the building connected to ours. Towering flames lit up the night sky as the street filled with the flashing red lights of at least fifteen fire engines. The chaos, urgency, and raw power of it all were both terrifying and surreal. Our apartment was the closest to the fire, yet we stood there, helpless witnesses to the inferno consuming what had once been the rectory of a church, someone’s sacred space.

As the minutes stretched into an hour, it became clear that this fire was not dying soon. We decided to find a hotel, knowing that sleep would be impossible amid the uncertainty.

I felt a strange mix of exhaustion and anxious anticipation when the sun rose. What would we return to? Walking into our apartment, I was hit with the thick scent of smoke, an invisible reminder of how close we had come to disaster. But beyond that? There was no damage, no injuries, and nothing lost. I felt an overwhelming wave of gratitude.

And yet, something was off. I first chalked it up to fatigue—I had barely slept. But as the day stretched on, a heaviness settled in. I wasn’t stressed in the obvious sense; my heart rate was steady, my breath calm. But beneath that mask of composure, something lingered.

It wasn’t until a dear friend pointed it out that I fully grasped what was happening. “You’ve just been through a very stressful event,” they said. And suddenly, it clicked. The mental energy it had taken to stay grounded, suppress panic, and process the what-ifs had drained me in ways I hadn’t acknowledged. My body had reacted quietly, with a churning stomach and an inexplicable sense of depletion.

So, I leaned into recovery. I slept. I breathed. I let myself zone out with an episode of Love is Blind (yes, go ahead and laugh). And most importantly, I embraced gratitude. Because no matter how unsettling the experience, the outcome could have been so much worse.

Fire is a force of destruction but also a force of transformation. It burns away, but it also clears space for something new. As I sit with this experience, I ask myself: What was this fire here to teach me? What needed to be burned away in me? What deeper lesson is waiting to emerge?

Every moment in life, even the terrifying ones, can invite growth. Sometimes, it just takes time to hear what it’s trying to say.

What about you? Have you had an experience recently that challenged you, pushed you, changed you? And what tools did you use to quiet the noise and reconnect with yourself?