“Well, Keri, it looks like we’re going to lose the house.” My father’s voice on the phone was steady, a bit weary perhaps, but calm.
My parents live in Escondido, CA, and early Sunday morning had called to tell me they were being evacuated from their home. EVentually, some 500,000 people were evacuated this week. Fierce winds were sending embers flying, igniting new fires all over the San Diego area. By Monday, the fires were burning within a few blocks of their house, which sits on the top of a hill overlooking Lake Hodges.
I prayed, earnestly. I asked God for a miracle, demanded that He somehow make it rain in Southern California. But as the song says, it never rains in Southern California, but man it pours. How true. I sent out an e-mail to a few close friends, asking for prayer.
Tuesday morning, Mom called me. She’d called her house (from the friend’s home where they were staying) and the answering machine had picked up her call. Which means the answering machine was not a puddle of plastic on her desk. Which meant, she thought, that the house had not been destroyed. The police were not letting anyone back into the neighborhood, but my parents were carefully watching news and websites. The fires appeared to have moved west of their home.
I continued to pray for a miracle. By this time I’d given up on rain dances and said, Do whatever you think will work.
Wednesday, Mom called me from her house. “I’m at the house,” she said. “I can still see some fires smoldering down by the freeway, but I think we’re okay.”
She sent me this photo, looking down from the deck into the pool. That’s ash in the bottom of the pool, and the white path is where the pool vacuum was attempting to clean it.
This morning, the winds have calmed, the weather is cooler. But the fires are still burning in many places.
I’d like to say that my prayers were answered. That prayer “worked” somehow. The thing is, I think a lot of other people were praying, and their houses were lost. Ken Blanchard, author of The One Minute Manager and Lead Like Jesus and other books on Christian leadership, lost his house in the fires. He’s a good Christian man, he goes to my parents’ church, he’s in ministry. I’m sure he had people praying for him. Countless other people in Southern California are praying, and yet the fires continue to destroy homes, farms, businesses.
So why was my parents’ home spared, while Ken and his wife Margie lost their home?
Did my prayers (and those of the friends I asked to pray) make a difference, or was it just dumb luck and some skillful firefighting that saved my parent’s home?
Even as I prayed, I found myself saying thank you: thank you that my parents are safe, that they had friends nearby that offered them a safe place to stay. Thank you for the many friends who have expressed their love and support. Thank you that it’s just stuff.
Often when I pray, God speaks to me by simply bringing to mind Scripture I have memorized. So many came this week as I prayed for my parents, particularly Isaiah 43: 1-2.
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.

This photo is looking off my parents’ deck at what is usually a verdant mountain covered with trees and bushes, where we often go hiking. It’s about two blocks from my parents’ home. You can see where the fire stopped at a creek bed below their home.
Six houses in their subdivision were destroyed, again, only a few blocks away.
My mother says the devastation was incredible, but what was even more amazing was the outpouring of kindness that the people of San Diego have shown to one another during this crisis. I’ll be blogging more about that on my own blog today.
Thanks to all who prayed. Because even though I wonder and question whether prayer stops fires, here’s what I do know: praying brought me closer to God this week. I would encourage you to pray for the people of Southern Cal this week. And listen to God as you do so. Prayer opened my ears to what God wanted to tell me. And although that wasn’t the miracle I was asking for, it’s one I received, and again, all I could say is, “thank you.”

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