At Times There Will Be Fire...

On Saturday morning, as I was preparing to teach and helping students find mat spaces in a packed yoga studio, I heard a nervous, high-pitched voice from the back of the room call out:

"Mary Catherine? Do you want me to put out this fire?"

My answer, of course, was yes (YES!!!!!), accompanied by a short sprint toward the flames that I saw flickering along the back window, in between the students getting organized and shaking out their mats.

Last week had been one of those weeks...the kind of week where you feel like your life is blowing up in your face and you question why things happen the way that they do; where life zooms into perspective and you feel all of the emotions all at once and you're raw but you're just dealing with it because you have to.

You know those times--after a loss, a tragedy, a horrible heartbreak or scare, a situation that leaves you with a deep emotional scar that you're working through--but when you also have responsibilities and groceries to buy and appointments to keep. 

So, I was getting back to it after a hard week and then my yoga class caught on fire. Granted it was only for a moment, only on a low windowsill where a mat strap seems to have come in contact with a candle flame, and it only left behind a bit of smoke, a weird smell, and a small spot of tar-like substance, BUT STILL. 

It felt so symbolic to me. 

When I came home I could do nothing but laugh as I reported to Ben, "My life has become a dumpster fire. Things are literally just catching on fire around me as I try to do basic things like teach yoga."

But all dumpster fire joking aside, I have been thinking a lot about those times in life when there is fire; when it feels like one thing catches and then another does and then fairly quickly, without realizing it, you're engulfed in flames. 

Big challenges, changes, and losses seem to sweep over our lives all at once, like a forest fire consuming everything in it's path. It seems that it's never just one challenge at a time, but they pile up, one on top of another.

Whenever things are really good I find myself quietly worrying about how life could be going so well. How could I get so lucky? How could things be so wonderful right now? When is something bad or hard or sad going to happen? 

But then the bad things do happen, or the challenges come, and you're left with a choice: will you let this fire consume you or purify you? Will you look at your sadness, or loss, or frustrations and see only ashes and the remains of what could have been, or will you see a chance to start again with more gratitude and awareness of what you do still have? 

Which is always so much. 

I'm not saying that the hard times don't suck. Especially when it feels like you've been collecting them, one after another, with no end in site. 

But I'm also finding that when things are bad, sometimes just feeling your emotions, standing in the fire, crying as much as you need to cry and being there in the middle of it all, is enough to purify you. So that when the flames start to disappear, you can look around and see that there is still a lot left. And see that there are people whose fires are 10x stronger than yours was, and whose fires will leave them with way less than you still have...which I guess is what we call gaining perspective.

So, that's where I am right now after the past few months of mini-fires in my life. I'm feeling a little raw but also really [surprisingly] lucky. And thankful.

I'm also feeling really confident in my answer to the question that I was asked on Saturday morning, "Mary Catherine, do you want me to put out this fire?"

Yes, yes I do. Lets put out all of the fires, let the smoke clear, and start anew, shall we?