God Was There In the Fire.

Sleepless nights. Crying in the shower.
Flinching every time the phone rings.
That was my reality — fear and grief wrapped around me like smoke I couldn’t escape.

But the truth is, the fire didn’t start when I became an adult.
It started in 1978, when I was just a little girl.
That was the year my mother left for the United States —
and that’s when I first met abandonment.
I didn’t have the language for it, but I felt it in my bones.

Then, a year later, just seven days after my tenth birthday…
My sister died.

I was reunited with my mother in December of 1979 —
but by then, the wound was already wide open.
My life changed in 1978, and I’ve been walking with pain ever since.

Years later, that pain grew heavier.

My world started crumbling the day I lost my mom.
And the collapse didn’t stop there.
One son — shot.
The other — locked away.
My confidence shattered. My heart fractured.
Then came the rest…

A year later, my nephew was murdered —
just one month before his 20th birthday.
And shortly after, I lost my auntie in the UK.
A year before that? Another auntie… and my half-brother’s mother.
And in 2020 — I lost my eldest sister.

I’ve been buried by grief more times than I can count.

I was just trying to survive.
Trying to figure out where I went wrong.
Asking myself what kind of mother I really was.
Doubting everything.
Falling into depression.
Grief didn’t come gently — it came like a storm with no warning.

But here’s the truth I didn’t expect:

God didn’t meet me after the fire.
He met me inside of it.

In the silence, I started hearing Him.
In the pain, I started feeling Him.
And somehow, through the flames, I started trusting Him more.

The same fire that tried to destroy me —
refined me.

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“When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.” — Isaiah 43:2

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I didn’t walk out untouched.
But I walked out unbound.

If you’re reading this, just know —
you’re not alone in your fire.
And you never were.