The Goodwin Fire Showed God is in Control of Even the Elements

We arrived home from our cross country trip to Indiana where we took a group of young people to a youth camp. It was a good time as always but after we came home I was anxious to walk our property, so curious to see exactly where the fire burned.

The valley where we live has been forever changed. Where once it was so thick with brush you could hardly walk through it, it is now so open that we are seeing areas that we never saw before. Before, when I saw an animal I knew it was a larger one such as a deer but now my brain is having to readjust because when I see one I think, “What is that?” and find out it’s just a cottontail rabbit.

Here is the view from our front yard now. All the black you see on the mountains and in the valley are ashes. The green bushes you see that run left to right at the bottom of the picture shows how the fire stopped right at our property line in this particular area.

Here in this picture you can see how the fire jumped the road and went up the hill in between the house and cabin.

A view of Grapevine Cabin.

Before the fire the brush was so thick, you wouldn’t have been able to see much of the cabin.

Another view of Grapevine Cabin after the fire. Again, all the black is ash.

Here is the contrast.

Grapevine Cabin before the fire.

This picture shows, once again, where the fire stopped at our property line (the line of bushes running left to right). But the wide band of green to the right of the picture and running down by the side of our home is not our property. What is interesting about this is that we built our house almost right on the property line. God preserved that band of greenery.

When you step out the back door of our house, it looks completely normal. You would never know that a wildfire had even happened. I am so happy for my husband and son because they had worked so hard on the back yard, building a pergola, putting in sprinkler lines, a waterfall and landscaping that I was feeling sad for them thinking they might lose it all in the fire.

The whole valley was pretty well burned over…

…except for a few patches here and there and all around our house and the VRBO – Grapevine Cabin.

There were multitudes praying and we know that God preserved our home because of them. The evidence is too great to ignore. Just yesterday as I pulled off the highway and looked across our valley, seeing all the devastation, I got all happy inside because there on the hillside was our place with green all around it.

Yes, the view out our front window is not as beautiful as it once was but it is a reminder of God’s care and the Divine Hand of Providence. It tells me He knows all about us, He has everything under control and even the elements are under His power. Things we all know in our heads but now I have physical evidence of it just outside my front window.

I walked our property after arriving home from youth camp and found Seth’s boat burnt. Besides this, 2 pieces of metal and a water hose, I found nothing else touched by the fire on our property except some vegetation.

I thought this interesting. Everything to the left of this road was completely burnt (This is where the fire stopped at our property line.) but an ember must have landed on this waterhose and melted it in about 3 places. The black spot you see on the ground is melted plastic from the hose. Anyways, I found it intriguing because nothing else on the road was burnt except for this one little spot

Here you can see how the fire was burning the side of the hill next to our driveway. Very close to our house but it stopped.

And this picture is one of my favorites.

I also find this a big miracle. Why did our shade cloth fabric that covers the top of our pergola as well as hang on the sides not melt from the heat of the fire or have any burning embers to land on it? The green belt that runs alongside of the property boundary was preserved and this was also the divine hand of Providence.

The new view from the pergola in our back yard. In all of nature there is beauty and although this is different than what we had before, I still find it has it’s own attraction. The fire was no accident, God knew all about it and used it to bring glory to Him. We are honored and humbled to have been a part of this great thing He did through the prayers of His people.