Impermanence

Fire season is here again.

Years ago, during the Camp Fire, I packed the car, yelled to the kids to get in, and begged my husband to leave with us while propane tanks exploded in the distance.

For two weeks, we didn’t know if our home was gone.

A year later, my husband died of cancer.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about impermanence. Not philosophically. Directly. The body changes. Homes disappear. Forms wear out. Life moves whether we are ready or not.

Yesterday, my body hurt. I used ice packs on all the sore spots, and they helped far more than I expected. Last night, my late husband came through from Heaven, making slapstick remarks about my ice packs and sore rear end. His humor was refreshing. I laughed. I relaxed. I slept well.

I remember something simple:

Forms are impermanent. Energy is not.

The house burned. Love did not.

The body hurts. Life still moves through it.

People leave physical form, yet the relationship itself is not as fragile as we think.

Sometimes what is lost returns to us, just not as we might have expected.  

Fear searches constantly for certainty. Anxiety scans the horizon, trying to predict the next fire before the smoke appears. But living entirely inside imagined catastrophe slowly pulls us away from the life happening right now.

Alertness matters. Preparation matters. Wisdom matters. But so does remaining present enough to receive the moment we are actually living.

This week, I kept returning to the same realization through different teachings:

God provides.

Not permanence.

Not guarantees.

Not control over every outcome.

Presence.

Guidance.

Humor.

Comfort.

The next step.

Maybe healing is not overcoming impermanence.

Maybe healing is realizing that while forms change, something essential remains present through it all, quietly waiting for us in the Eternal Now.