What If Today...

When Pat and I go camping we often take the opportunity to explore local back country. On one trip we decided to drive the Chewuch River road to its terminus at Thirtymile Creek. I wanted to check out the campgrounds and Pat wanted to visit the site of the 2001 Thirtymile Creek fire which had claimed the lives of four young firefighters.

The road starts out as a scenic byway up a pleasant river valley. It passes expensive homes and well tended ranches. Then the road narrows and open fields give way to forest. The scent of Ponderosa pine fills the air. As you near the site of the fire the road narrows even more and the pavement ends. The forest becomes wild, thick, and tangled. The Chewuch River becomes shallow—not much more than a small creek—and certainly not a likely place to take refuge from a wildfire.

There was a shocking transition as we entered the fire zone. The river was choked with downed, burned trees. Everything was black. This fire had not skipped around as so many others do. All vegetation as far as we could see was dead, black, burnt. And then we saw it—a new patch of pavement on the west side of the rough washboard road.

We parked the truck and followed the path up to the memorial, built to blend in with the rock scree. The first thing that caught my eye was their pictures—two young men and two young women, all about the age of my own children. I had seen their likenesses in papers. I had watched reports on TV. But suddenly seeing them memorialized at this remote site—the very site where they had died—affected me far more than I had ever anticipated.

When I saw the faces—especially the ones of the young women—my thought was, “These were someone’s children. … They could have been my children!”

I will never forget one day when my oldest child was about five days old. Suddenly I was gripped with the thought, “What if he should die? How would I ever survive?” The Lord replied, “He is My child. He is only yours for a season. You must always be willing to give him back to Me.”

From that moment on I have had to remember to continually give my children back to the Lord, especially now that they are adults. My job is to pray for them, to love them, to model my understanding of what it means to live like a Christian. But it is not my job to control them—even when it comes to matters of faith.

We don’t want our children to fail. We don't want them to be hurt. And we certainly don't want them to make us look bad. But our children can’t inherit our relationship with God. They must choose to seek Him on their own, to develop their own relationship with Him. And, in turn, we must rely on our heavenly Father to teach us how to love and support them without meddling; how to give His children back to Him.

Pastor Kit

Thirtymile photo credit: USDA-Forest Service. (link)