Ah, the mountains. Today it was 69 degrees at one point and we had all our windows open. The breeze streamed in from across the lake, made purer by the trees dotting the sides of the hills. Our little apartment was getting an oxygen bath and we loved it.
Until...I asked our oldest son to go look out and see if a candle had burned down too far, or the stove was on or something. Because suddenly all I could smell and taste was smoke. He ran back into the room where I was sorting old toys to give away and shouted, "Mom! The living room is smokey. Really smokey." And boy howdy was it ever.
What happened you ask? Oh, nothing really. Our neighbors were just burning trash on our roof--plastic trash--and the smoke was pouring into every open window in our apartment. The acrid fog of melted plastic left an oily soot over everything inside. We had to wash all of our clean dishes again, mop the floor, strip the sheets off the bed. We blew our noses and cleaned our ears and--you guessed it--black soot everywhere. We all took showers because even our fingernails were dirty.
And you know, our landlady came rushing up, apologizing profusely all the while. It was her fault somehow (we couldn't understand exactly how she figured in) and she was watching us intently to read our reaction to the havoc wreaked on our home. Somehow God allowed us to look at her with soot-lined eyes and say, "It is a small thing. These things happen. It's ok." I don't know how we managed to not kill someone, but it was a moment in time where we did and said the right thing in a tight spot. I'm documenting it here for proof, y'all.
Evidence of God's work is so exciting, isn't it?
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