“Hyperekplexia” was not a word I expected to look up in the dictionary. It means an exaggerated startle reaction caused by auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli followed by hypertonia. The fire alarm was tested at work last week, and when it went off, I hit my knees on the bottom of my desk. I don’t (think I) have a genetic disorder that caused my jump, but I have been a little more tense than usual.

I don’t like fire.

Yesterday, the Hughes Fire in Santa Clarita kicked up from a brush fire to 10,000 acres in just a few hours. Some of our staff were evacuated from their homes, others received on a warning notice. The winds are high, and the flames and smoke plums seem apocalyptic.

Like many of my fellow Angelenos, I have a stack of important papers and hard drives sitting next to the door, just in case. On top of that pile sits a plastic airplane, a 2-inch scrap from my childhood.

It used to be a biplane and have a full propeller. A little pilot once sat by a tiny swiveling machine gun. It was one of a dozen toy airplanes waiting for me when I daily visited Mr. Stickle at Century Cleaners, a business just two doors down Main Street from the Candor IGA. “Stick,” as everyone called him, was my neighborhood grandfather and the constant companion of my best childhood memories.

The dry cleaners burned down one morning in July when I was about 5 years old, and Stick lost his business. With firefighters still cleaning up the smoking ruins, I walked down to see what was left. Century Cleaners was just charcoal and twisted metal. My planes were gone.

It was a summer of fires. The house beside us, the two houses across the street, and my airplanes. I thought we would be next. The sights of watching fire creep along the electrical wires to our house is still vivid in my mind today.

I stood there in the smoky aftermath mourning the best playroom I would ever know, several truths sprouting in my tiny understanding.

Human life means more than this stuff of earth. We still had Stick. He had been out jogging with his dog, “Ugly” when the boiler blew up, and he was sad, but safe. The sheepskin in the wheeled canvas hamper and the clothes press (that we called “Suzy”) were gone. The shelf of snacks, the canned cheese and crackers, gone. But we still had Stick.

Fire and suffering make way for new opportunities. Even though his business was gone, a dream job as a flight instructor was waiting for my friend. And that now homeless dog came to live with our family. No matter what my mother says, Ugly was a beautiful gift to our family for the next dozen years.

God knows what provision is needed to turn our eyes to Him. The fire fight had left pools of water everywhere. As I looked down, sitting in a puddle where the back door had been was the little red airplane. Somehow, it survived the boiler blast and the heat of the fire. I have taken the plane with me with every move across the four corners of the United States. At first, it was just a poignant memory, but its message has grown in my heart over the years: God cares for His people in very personal ways. I would have survived without the comfort that toy, but the Lord is so kind to give me a gentle reminder of His love and provision through the decades.

I don’t like fire. It is distracting and destructive. But I pray in the midst of it, the Lord would cause each of us to see His hand at work and trust Him through the winds and ash and uncertainty.