Fire and Rain...

Oxymorons… or just morons,


Oxymorons make me think of Switchfoot’s song “A Beautiful Letdown.”


“It was a beautiful letdown, when we crashed and burned. When I found myself alone, unknown, and hurt. It was a beautiful letdown…”


Can a letdown be beautiful? Don’t letdowns normally cause pain, anguish, doubt? Switchfoot makes the argument that finding Jesus and realizing that Christians aren’t made for this world is a beautiful letdown. Knowing you belong in the world but not of it… that our home is Heaven and not Earth. That’s a beautiful letdown.


My mind quickly drifts to my BFF James Taylor’s song “Fire and Rain.” Now fire and rain are two of the best opposites I’ve ever heard. Just the thought of the coexisting forces of fire and rain make me smile and ponder the existence of such an anomaly. Fire exacerbating. Rain cooling. I just don’t think they can coexist. Sweet Baby James thought he would see Susanne again, but of course he didn’t – she was lost in the fire and rain. “Thought I’d see you, thought I’d see you, fire and rain now.”






And then of course, fire makes me think of houses burning down. That is one of my absolute biggest fears. When I was 9 or 10, our neighbors’ house was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. I’ll never forget standing up on the hearth around our fireplace peering out the window into the distance, watching the jet black smoke billow up in columns of disaster. (We were country neighbors mind you… this means that the Harpers’ house was a good mile or so away.) We went down to the house to see what we could do to help, and were sad to learn that not much of anything was salvageable. The house lay in ruins.

I remember clearly feeling so distraught. I remember the feeling of tears stinging my face as the thick, acrid smoke clung to my nostrils and made breathing difficult. I never knew anyone whose home burned down. The Harpers’ house held so many of my childhood memories. Me, the annoying little sister, tagging along with Mandy while she, Brad, and Alan hung out on Brad’s king size waterbed listening to Guns ‘N Roses, Nirvana, and Metallica. (What can I say, I learned good music at a very early age thanks to their influence!) Annual Super Bowl Sunday parties – the huge spread of wings and homemade dips and other appetizers, the women sitting around the table laughing about the inconsequential every-day nuances of life, the men gathered around the big screen t.v. to watch the game, everyone piling in the living room overflowing from couches and chairs to the floor to watch the halftime production and every crazy commercial. Summers spent playing in the pool and riding four-wheelers in the sand dunes.

The Harpers rebuilt their home in almost the exact same spot. A few years later, lightning struck again. Once more, thick black smoke rose to the sky proclaiming the superiority of the forces of nature. This time, things were different. The rain came. Only it was too late. All possessions were once again lost to the monster of fire.

Fire and Rain. If that’s not an oxymoron, I don’t know what is.