Of Food, Fire, And Being Fine

“What if Chase ever did something truly harmful?” 

 Sometimes the question keeps my mother heart and brain up at night. Raising a child with brain damage and low executive function (the part of his brain that reminds him if things are a good idea or not) can be exhausting, but it’s the element of danger, the knife’s edge – both a literal and metaphorical idea most of the time – that keeps my eyes open in the dark and makes my heart pound faster. 

What would I do if he ever did?

He wouldn’t, would he?

I didn’t know how soon I would be asked to put those ambiguous thoughts to the test of reality…

“FIRE…!!! FIRE-FIRE-FIRE-FIRE…!!”

It was early on a spring-cold Sunday morning and I thought I had heard all of Chase’s screams, but this one was new and horrible – the panic at a level I’ve never experienced before. I could feel his fear in my own blood. Hitting the lower level stairs at a dead run, I turned the split corner by the front door landing and looked up into my kitchen, the glow of flames currently contained in the microwave clearly reflecting off the dingy white ceiling. 

Why hadn’t we ever re-painted the ceiling? It’s so strange what random thoughts race through your mind in a moment of threat and adrenaline.

The kitchen was on fire. How long did I have before it spread and cut off the boys escape from down the hall? Did Aidan have his headphone on – could he hear Chase scream? Thank God Bob and Darcy were already gone.

My view of the unfolding glow was only a split second as Chase and both of his brothers came pounding down the stairs, free of the hallway in their pajamas and bare feet, obeying the command to take nothing but their bodies and exit the house immediately. 

Heart racing so hard I could hear the thump of it against my ear drums, I pressed those three precious digits into the screen of my phone and thumb hovering over the final push to put the call through, I stood in front of my house, the door thrown wide open and wondered if today was the day Chase finally burned the house down. Perhaps it was always only a matter of time…

Thumb paralyzed on the phone, I realized that there were no longer glowing ripples of flame reflections visible through the door. I expected to watch them climbing a wall by now, not go dark.

Did I dare look before I placed the call? To go back into a structure potentially on fire was the height of stupidity...

Did I misunderstand when Chase cried for us to run? But I had seen it happening with my own eyes…hadn’t I?

I left the boys crying in fear on the front walk and gingerly entered the house again. 

There had been a small fire. 

And it was totally gone. 

Slowly, the reality began to unfold with the story. Chase struggles to read, so many times, he simply does not read – relying instead on pure instinct and determination. So he didn’t see the small, brightly-colored print at the bottom of a fast food bag warning about the microwave and his first clue to the awful mistake was watching the bag with his leftover chicken sandwich burst into flames in front of his eyes. 

There is probably a logical, scientific explanation for why the bag stopped burning, for why the dish burned, but did not catch fire, for why the inside of the microwave smelled heavy and densely of acrid smoke, yet there was not so much as a vapor or scorched wall present when I finally got the courage to pop open the door. The walls of the machine were cool to the touch.

There is probably a logical, scientific explanation, but to me, this will always be both a miracle and a message. 

Everything could have burned, but it didn’t. While Chase made crazy decisions and took uninhibited risks, the worst was withheld and we were kept wildly, joyfully safe.

And as I stared at the cinders of the paper on my scorched dining plate, standing in the middle of the kitchen I still had, listening to my children stepping back into the house in relief and joy, it felt as if God himself whispered quiet and close: 

“See? I’m not taking it all away, but I’ll see you through it just fine.”

Moment by moment. 

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
    and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
    and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
    the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”

Isaiah 43:2-3, ESV