Rising From The Ashes
I recently travelled to Canada for a couple of weeks for a long overdue catch up with our darling girl who’s been living there for the past 18months, man I miss her!
Anyhoo, apart from Vancouver & Whistler we spent four nights exploring around Canmore and travelled the Icefields Parkway.
WOW WOW WOW! How spectacular are the Canadian Rockies in winter. We were captivated with majestic awe at the snow covered Alberta mountain forests and seemingly endless white peaks of these incredible mountain ranges.
It was nothing like I have ever experienced before. So invigorating!
As we drove on through natures wonderland I noticed a gradual change in the vegetation from thick luscious pines, spruce, aspen and fir trees to huge blackened trunks that resembled giant burnt matchsticks. There were thousands upon thousands and it became obvious that the wildfires had torn through these forests in summer months.
I can’t even begin to imagine how ferocious and terrifying it would be to view such an out of control inferno–blazing its way–roaring over the the mountains with flames soaring hundreds and hundreds of meters in the air, I mean, how could anyone possibly extinguish such a force of nature? I guess they can’t–they can only do their best to protect property and lives but ultimately these natural phenomena’s must run their course.
I was fixated on these blackened masterpieces filling the landscape and noticed at the base of the erect dead wood there was sapling after sapling springing through the snow. (Interestingly to me also was that many of these charred remains still stood upright, why hadn’t they hadn’t all crumbled to earth in a pile of charcoal? I wonder if perhaps they shoot new branches too?)
New growth, a regeneration of the next season for the forest and I realised that while the flames consumed and apparently destroyed everything above ground, they did not destroy the root system. In fact they made way for new life to begin…
In this wonderment I thought of everyone who has or is experiencing the betrayal furnace and I reflected on what this might mean for us…
I’m sure we’ve all felt the heat of the flames, we can all feel like burnt blackened dead wood, we can feel that we’ve been suffocated, and the life and air we breathe has been sucked out of us by the intense pain of betrayal…
I want to encourage you, those flames cannot touch the roots of who you are. Your identity does not lie in what has happened to you, no you are much more than this sweet friend. You are worthy, you are courageous, you are loved and you belong!
It is hard, it is painful but if you water and fertilise the roots of your spirit, you too will RISE FROM THE ASHES!
YOU DESERVE TO!
Noni XXX
I’m no Spielberg, I hope you get the gist
When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you.
Isaiah 43:2 New Living Translation (NLT)
