The fires are still raging in British Columbia, but the closest one to us is mostly contained. Today’s smoke is from controlled burns. Fighting fire with fire. We hope.

I’ve noticed a strange mix of emotions in people right now. The apostle Paul wrote that people who show mercy need to learn to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. I was in a place this week where I listened to three different people in different circumstances on the same day. It was a day of weeping and rejoicing.

One was rejoicing that her prayers were answered. Their property in West Kelowna was in a pocket the fire skipped over. Their house and neighbourhood remain untouched. Another woman, a single mother with four children, lost everything except the items they grabbed and stashed in the car as they fled the encroaching flames. She loves the Lord and prayed just as much, but the fire didn’t skip over her neighbourhood. In fact, the area that included 150 rental units was totally destroyed. Another family is still awaiting word on the condition of their property and has not yet returned home.

Then there is our own story. We watched the progression of the fire from a safe distance in our steel and concrete building in a mostly commercial area of the city. We suffered from the smoke and considered joining the thousands who fled the area on both sides of the lake, but decided that sitting in stop-and-go traffic for hours in heavy smoke might be harder on our health than staying home with windows closed and AC on. (I wish now I had bought that air purifier when I saw it on sale last March.) I guess we suffer from a bit of survivor’s guilt.

Conversations with virtually everyone after a dramatic disaster like the Grouse Complex Wildfire in the Kelowna area usually begin with the question, “Are you alright?” and “Did you see it when the giant flames reflected in the water? Where were you when it jumped the lake?” We tell our stories as a way of processing something we hoped to never experience. For some, faith in God, no matter what, has increased. Others struggle to believe that God cares or that anything good could come out of this. They feel abandoned. This is trauma in real time.

I was planning to visit my cousin’s flower farm when she posted photos of the huge plume of smoke that drifted over their place on the first day of the Westside fire. They postponed their annual public tour until conditions improved. This past Sunday, I told my dear cousin and her gardener husband about the conversations I had been having as we walked in the garden. I guess weeping and rejoicing were still on my mind when they gave me permission to take my camera and stay as long as I wanted in the area where they grow many varieties of dahlias.

This is what the flowers reminded me of. We all experienced the falling ash from trees and structures going up in flame but on this day, I was ready to shake off the ashes like the gardener shook ashes off the flowers. It’s time to be who God made me to be. I’ve learned from experience to pay attention to the condition of my heart as soon as I am able after a time of trouble. It’s possible, even necessary, to bracket feelings and tend to practical needs at first, but setting them aside indefinitely leads to problems later. I need to process.

All of the flowers in this garden are dahlias, but they can be quite different in their expression of dahlia-ness. Some are small, tidy domed bundles in sedate colours with mathematically determined petal distribution. Some are exuberant semi-chaotic displays of bold colors Mom would have warned me to never to wear side by side. The flowers were all dahlias. They all had similar structure, but I was amazed by the diversity on display. They reminded me of the different types of people I have listened to this week.

Some people respond to times of fear-inducing uncertainty with a need for decently-and-in-order control. Some seem to display a limited range of emotions like a black and white photo. Just-the-facts people. Many of our friends and neighbours who’ve watched fire devour memories and investments in their now destroyed homes are weeping, stunned by the magnitude of loss. They are wondering what they did wrong and struggling to get back a measure of control. Others, freed from the restraints of police-enforced evacuation orders, or triggering isolation behind closed doors and windows whilst wearing those wretched face masks (again), react to the signs of increasing freedoms with relief. They may experience a sudden flurry of creative expression with the messiness of a little adult ADD distraction mixed in.

I can do both and often do. Alternately and simultaneously. In times of trouble, organization is essential to survival. I make lists. When the crisis is over, freedom is essential to creative re-building and emotional expression. I might paint a chair or take photos and write an article for my blog while I ask, “What does all this mean, Lord? How should I respond? How do I relate to you and others without letting disappointment taint everything?”

The problem in our relationships often occurs when we are transitioning from crisis to healing in different ways and on different timetables. The helpless can become the hopeless. Some people tend to follow a drive to create order and want to try to control as much as possible. They set more rules, guidelines, protocols, or whatever works for them so this doesn’t happen again. They want to impose discipline via flow charts on both the somebody-look-after-me types and the don’t-fence-me-in types. Disappointed creative freedom lovers, on the other hand, tend to resent restrictions. They may avoid energy-sapping overt battles over control by going all passive/aggressive –in a original way, of course. What we don’t understand is that both extremes are responding to fear – fear of being out of control and fear of being controlled.

Either way, living in fear opens the door to conflict and unhealthy ways of thinking that come after disappointment and a loss of innocence. Bad things can happen to good people. Prayers do not always receive the answer we want. What now? When the devil senses vulnerability, he says, “Oh. You are disappointed and angry. I can help you with that.” Listening to his prompts stirs up anger and unforgiveness that, when it sits around too long, can congeal into bitterness as hard as concrete.

Needing to be in control, needing to be controlled and needing to avoid being controlled become the habits of fearful bitter people. Over-controlled people feel disrespected and fall into resentment and distrust. Controlling people, especially those who seek positions of power, also feel disrespected. They distrust uncooperative types and respond with tighter controls. Over-controlled people respond to more control with more distrust while the hopeless watch… We see that cycle playing out far too often in the world around us.

There is no peace in the garden until we take responsibility for turning to the the One who knows us best and loves us most. He is the one who offers healing for our own wounds. In the process, we need to stop to recognize that our way may not the right way or the only way. Our way may inflict more wounds and contribute to the distrust/control cycle and the growing snowball we would dearly love to heave at someone someday. We need to acknowledge that we do not live in a vacuum and our behaviour does affect others.

It is so easy to discard people who don’t see things the same way we do. Much of the division so many of us have seen become entrenched in our communities is based on fear of pain or loss. We may have a diminishing store of grace for people who fail to read the room and instead rejoice while others weep or weep while others rejoice.

The answer? I believe the Holy Spirit’s character is revealed by the fruit of the Holy Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-governance. His grace empowers us to break the cycle by supplying the necessary qualities to respond his way when we seek it instead of relying on our own strength. He gives us love that counteracts fear, and kindness to return for lack of caring, and the ability to govern ourselves faithfully while allowing others the freedom to make choices the way he does.

Anyway, that’s what the Creator of beautiful people in community and lovely flowers in a garden communicated to me through diversity in dahlias. My opinions, as usual, are subject to change as I learn and heal and grow. I leave you with photos taken in the garden. What do you see?