Fire and Renewal

I can’t remember where I was, but I remember when the news reports and photos flooded our home. As the fires consumed the historic village ofLahaina, it became an assault on so many memories. Like many places, Maui can hold unique experiences and moments for each person. It seems to carry a separate treasure, a solace, for every heart.  I am no different. Maui held my heart when I felt profound joy or loneliness, often hand in hand. It was a place where I felt allowed to be myself. Allowed to be socially awkward or pretend to be outgoing. It held my loneliness during moments when I felt lost. It understood me in times when I was misunderstood.

I watched the aerial photos of Lahaina’s destruction with my face pressed to the screen.  The restaurants I had sat in once, filled with adventure and yet contentment, were ash.  Benches snuggled on were gone, and art galleries filled with Christian Lasson paintings I had lost my heart in were no more. Doorways of restaurants that I had leaned against while being asked out for the first time were destroyed. Lahaina was not my home. I could never feel the destruction and pain of those lifelong residents who made that place what it was.  But it was an actual place of rest. A place of first adventures. Heart in your throat moments. I grieved the footage I saw, my hand held out to a place that wasn’t mine, and yet, it hurt as if it was. Some places hold these things for us. They manifest into something more than they are or were intended to be. We can’t explain them, but they’re there. For some, it is a song or a smell. A familiar sweater or couch. The feeling of a plane taking off or a car engine revving. We come home to a place that has been lost.  Like the lost boys of Peter Pan, we gather around something to let us take in. I didn’t belong to Maui, but Maui belonged to me and captured a place in my heart.  It made me feel alive. It made me feel safe. As I would gaze out over the waves crashing into the shore, I felt somehow not alone anymore in times when all I felt was alone. I lost my dad so young, and Maui took me in; it breathed air into my lungs, comforting me that being alone was okay sometimes. It reminded me after graduation that I wasn’t as unappealing as many of us felt then. It wrapped me in its embrace as the love of my life swung me around at sunset.  It was a beacon that called me.

Ironically, I don’t prefer water activities. You won’t find me at the beach. So, I’m not sure exactly what it was or remains to be. I wonder if many of us seek those places where the earth seems to understand us, where our breathing is deeper and more manageable. A breeze blows through, reminding us that what was lost can be found again. What suffering we have endured will pass. Maui held me and read as Wendy read to the lost boys at bedtime. She reminded them of a life that felt so distant that they had forgotten they used to want it.

Maui often feels like a love letter from my Creator.  As if I am diving into Psalm 23, where He is reminding me that He can restore my soul, even when it didn’t feel possible, when I was in the valley of the shadow of death.