WE WILL...



From celebration and joy, to tragedy and mourning, to praise and thanksgiving. In six weeks time, I went from the elation of our wedding and honeymoon, directly into the fun and warmth of the Christmas season, only to then be dumped harshly into the heartbreak of losing my childhood home.

At approximately 3 AM on January 7, my younger brother Cory, who was sleeping on a pull-out couch in my parents’ basement, was awoken to a crash from up on the first floor and saw smoke billowing down the stairs. A volunteer firefighter, Cory sprang into action, and was upstairs in an instant, yelling with insistence over and over again – THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE! GET OUT NOW! On the second floor were my parents and our family dog in one room, my mother-in-law in another, and my sister-in-law in the third. My Grandma was in a new addition to the house on the first floor.

To be awoken out of sleep in such a way can be confusing and disorienting, but my mother-in-law said later that Cory was so direct and insistent, they all knew to follow his directions immediately. The next part is directly taken from her written account of that night.

I immediately got up and left the room and met Sue just outside the room. I went to the door where Ruth was, to yell for her. She got her door open just as I was trying to open it for her. We three then descended the stairs through black, billowing smoke. (Rick had already gotten down the stairs) I was in front, then Ruth, then Sue. Ruth tells me I was hunched over and going very slowly, but I'm sure I was trying to feel the steps and avoid the smoke somehow. I'm aware that at some point I began yelling, "I can't breathe!" or "I can't see!" I don't remember now exactly what I yelled, and it feels like it was someone not me that was yelling. At that point Rick yelled, "The door is here!" and I vaguely saw his form in the doorway. Not remembering the design of the stairs I stepped off the side from about 4 steps up and landed twisting my ankle. I remember Rick grabbing me funneling us out the door and Ruth's memory reminds me of gagging and gasping for air as we got outside. I remember Ruth jumping into her pants. She had the presence of mind to grab her purse, pants and shoes as she headed out her door. I was barefoot in my nightgown.

Once everyone from upstairs was outside, Cory went back inside and over into my Grandma’s side of the house, the entrance being immediately inside the door and at the bottom of the steps they had all just come down. Cory went in the apartment and closed the main door. He then went into her bedroom and closed that door. He handed both my Grandma and her dog out the window to my Dad. She was the only one who didn’t have to go through the fire.

Everyone was shouting for Daisy, the family dog, to get out. But it was too late to go back in. Almost a week later, Cory would find Daisy’s body in my parents' room, not far from her dog bed. The majority of my parents’ room had fallen through to the first floor, and Cory walked across the only part of the floor remaining to retrieve her body. We simultaneously scolded him and thanked him for doing it. Miraculously her body was not damaged by fire. She was covered in soot, but not burned. The fact that she was so close to her bed means she was taken quickly by the smoke, and was not wandering around the house trying to get out. Cory and Andy dug her grave that night while me and my Dad held the flashlights. Daisy is buried alongside a long line of good Weber dogs - Katie, Pepper, Gizmo, and now Daisy Dog. Luckily Andy and I have video footage of her this past Christmas wearing her red reindeer ears and doing the "Christmas Wiggle." I watch that video and laugh and cry so hard at the same time. We'll miss her a lot.



It’s surreal that Andy’s mom and sister were staying in the house on this particular night. They were passing through from New Jersey to Ohio and had stopped for a visit. Our moms were up talking until almost 2 AM, just an hour before the fire began. However, we know that God had a plan for our families. Because my mom kicked Cory out of his bed for Andy’s mom to sleep, Cory was then sleeping in the basement. Only Cory heard that crash that woke him up. The smoke alarms did not go off. The fire chief told my family that two minutes longer, and Cory would have been the only one able to escape the house safely through the basement door.

I don’t know why they always say those things—they seem so dramatic to me, when extra drama really seems unnecessary. I spent the first half of last week, immediately after the fire, being frightened by that statement. Knowing how close things were sent chills down my spine. As time went on, a peace quite the opposite of my original fear settled into my spirit as God spoke to me. This one assurance keeps going through my head and I’ve repeated it to many people, “God did not mean for anyone to die in that fire.” However it was arranged and whatever would have developed, God meant to save our families. If Andy’s family had cancelled their plans and not been able to stay, I believe other circumstances would have put Cory in the basement, or the smoke alarms would have gone off, or something. I can almost imagine God looking on the scene with care, and knowing that Cory hadn’t woken up yet, deciding to cause a little crash on the first floor. “There, that outta do it…”

I’m not one to believe God is going around pulling puppet strings, but I do believe that the whole world is in his hands. He had that situation in his hands, leading me to believe without a doubt that he’ll also have every future, unforeseeable, vulnerable situation in his capable, strong hands.

The house is a total loss. It was over 100 years old and originally sat in peace by itself, before other houses, malls and 7-11s sprang up around it. Our family has lived there for 36 years. It sits now a dark and scary place. The stuff of nightmares. Everything is black. Boarded up windows. No color, no light, no life. To take something that was once bright and cheery and full of life and to make it all black and charred and a shell of itself is a disturbing thing. It will have to be torn down. A new house will be built in its place – a different and probably much better house, in many respects. I told my mom this weekend that no matter what the new house looks like, she’ll still be able to look out her window or sit on her patio facing the yard and it will immediately still feel like home. Maybe sometimes they’ll even be able to forget for a moment that anything has even changed.

The only bit of color to be found on my mom's black, charred desk full of ashes was a piece of a card sticking up in the middle of it, which proclaimed boldly across the top, "The Lord is our protector." I guess in case God thought we didn't quite get it, he decided to leave us a big sign. We didn't have a camera at the time to get a picture, but I grabbed it to give to my parents. Maybe we'll even frame that half-burned card for our new house as a reminder of what God did for us and continues to do for us.