When I went into the fire, nobody could have ever told me that I would find anything positive to share about the experience, no blessings, no lessons, and certainly nothing to celebrate. Because with each recollection of what I went through, I must reach back into a place of pain that was sometimes so intolerable and so hard that it defied words, definition, explanations, adjectives, or description. And I know that the only way I can even talk about it now is because through the goodness of God, I have been separated from the lick of the fire that scorched, stung, and burned me from the inside out like a dry twig in the middle of a blazing inferno.

But the emotional reality and memories of the encounter remain alive and well. And for whatever reason, it has allowed me to find the language to express my Cleansing In The Fire, even as I am still enduring the existence of the fire.

I also had no idea that the urge to write and share this encounter would pursue me so vehemently. It felt very private. And it also was so unrealistically indescribable, that even as I dealt with it, I couldn’t believe it was actually happening to me. My mind could not give authenticity to the unimaginable pain that was pounding my body almost constantly. And because it didn’t make any sense but was nevertheless unrelentingly true, all I could do was cry.

So that is exactly what I did. I cried and cried, day, afternoon, evening, and especially in the middle of the night/early morning. And while in the throes of the force and persistence which the tears consistently kept gushing out, I thought that I might never stop crying because I didn’t have the capacity to stem them, and lost the will to stop them. However, at some point I realized that although I was hurting, I wasn’t so much in pain as much as I was releasing pain. And even as I sit at this writing within my remembrances, my eyes well up with tears and my heart is re-feeling the sting of its then brokenness. But theses tears come accompanying the knowledge and truth that all the while the In The Fire tears were flowing, I also was in the process of cleansing.

I now know with a perfect knowing that all of that crying that came up out of me, some of it came from and was inspired by the distress that had lodged itself in my body stemming from this injury. But I also realized that with this great outpouring, I was unleashing tears and hurts of years gone by. Old pain that had stored itself in a nook or cranny of my psyche thinking that it had been hidden from view for all times, even from my very own self. Because as life has traveled on, I mistakenly or naively believed that it had been healed and/or melded into the history of my body only faintly recording that it ever was. Yet in conversation when attempting to explain the unfathomable amount of crying I did, all I could think about and hear from my own recounting was heaviness, sadness, and sorrow compounded by more of the same. Again, never did I consider healing or cleansing as part of my process.

When the first glimpse of this notion came to me, and as I cautiously allowed it to take root, I came to understand that while in this debilitated state of In The Fire, truly there was only God and me. And in His infinite goodness, wisdom, love, and grace, he gave me the opportunity to purge pain, get rid of grief, separate from sorrow, and alleviate the agony that had affixed itself within me, becoming a part of my identity and fusing itself into my very DNA. You know, the sadly, but surely kind of pain that over time becomes so comfortable, familiar, and natural that you don’t even realize that it is hampering, hindering, and hurting you - just merely existing with and as you. But, during this period while I was open, down, and available, it was the perfect time and setting. I wasn’t in a place to resist and didn’t have the ability to run.

Hurts, wounds, haunts, inflicted and self-imposed – flushed away. Anger, resentment, grudges, recriminations, and regrets, inflicted and self-imposed – washed out. Violence, violations, distress, and fear, inflicted or self-imposed - unearthed, dismantled and discarded. Shame, blame, stains, filth, stench, rot, and decay, inflicted or self-imposed - scrubbed, scoured and sanitized. And heavens knows, that this kind of soul and heart work is in fact a real turned-up-furnace-full-blast-fire-cleansing. But for the cost of my healing and wholeness, this ugliness and damage that had lived inside, mutilating, disfiguring, and imposing upon my spirit, my joy and my light had to be banished and destroyed. It was/is not all of me or my story, but too much of it nevertheless.

As I said earlier, In The Fire, there was only God and me. And since this life-altering occurrence, I am lighter, brighter, happier, and hopefully wiser than when this leg of my life’s journey began. I am embracing a new attitude, a new life, and a new understanding. I am renewed, refreshed, relieved, and released.

Cleaning In The Fire, though hard and gut-wrenching, is nonetheless a beautiful thing. So here I sit with cool yet warming, gentle, smooth, and soothing water flowing over me, cascading down into me, agitating, rinsing, and cleansing me. Cleansing me In The Fire. Oh what a blessing!!!!