Although I've always enjoyed the fall season, I hate one of its deadly aspects: most residential fires occur during the fall and winter months. When the autumn nights turn cold, people begin firing up furnaces, fireplaces and space heaters to take away the chill. Accidents can turn these efforts to stay warm into death and destruction. Most people underestimate fire potential, since only one in four families have escape plans and have practiced them.

People who have lost everything in a fire are forever changed in the way they view life. They've learned that life is not about material things that are consumable. They know fire loves to consume. My parents learned that severe lesson back in the days before volunteer firefighting departments existed in rural areas.

In the early years of their marriage they lived in a wooden structure they called "the old store building." It had oiled floors, a big wooden counter where sales had taken place and a large upstairs for storage. A wood stove and no shortage of wood kept it warm in winter, a cozy place for their two little girls. One Saturday evening before leaving to go to my granny's house, daddy put several pieces of wood in the stove so the house wouldn't get cold while we were gone.

Later on an orange glow in the sky sent neighbors running to see our home engulfed in towering flames. By the time my parents arrived on the scene nothing was salvageable. They just clung to each other while everything they possessed in this world lay burned before their eyes: an antique pump organ my mama's mama had given her, photographs, graduation diplomas, quilts, baby clothes, a few pieces of new furniture, a banana cake ready for Sunday dinner, and a box of little chicks too young to let out in the yard. A man seeing the remains of my sister's tricycle in the middle of the fire began to cry.

No one could tell for sure, but the wood stove was blamed for the fire. Daddy blamed himself.

All four of us slept together that night in one bed at my granny's house. We were stripped down to the clothes on our backs and a car, but my parents were thankful we were alive. Mama still cries when she remembers the kindness shown by churches that "took up" money for us, and neighbors who helped the helpless get back on their feet. She cried too, remembering my sister asking over and over, "Mama, my little robe burned up?" Mama had just bought my 5-year-old sister a new long robe.

Years later daddy turned that old store lot into a large garden plot. Every time he plowed bits of glass, cup handles, fragments of plates came to the surface. Hoeing beans one summer I found a dirt-encrusted object that turned out to be a white ceramic dog figurine. I marveled that it had escaped the fire without damage.

The difference between that dog figurine and almost everything else in the house, was that the figurine had already been through the fire once before. Anything about it that could burn had already been burned away in the fire of a kiln. In the same way, the trials of life put us through the fire. Once we've been through the fire of affliction, we're changed.

The Bible speaks of our lives being like structures that we build. The foundation and the quality of materials we use will determine whether we stand the test of fire because "it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is." (I Cor. 3:13)

God gives us grace through Jesus to make our lives fireproof.

Arlene Neal is a wife, mother, ASU alumnus and community college instructor. She lives in Dudley Shoals. Contact her by e-mail at nealies@hotmail.com.