Brian Maloy

3 Months —

Many of you have asked for an update and wanted to know how things are going post-fire. Well, we are roughly 3 months out from the day, and things have moved forward some, and time has stood still in others.

We are “okay”, most of the time. But we have hard days, overwhelmed moments, and we are exhausted. Despite losing everything, we still have school, work, church, and life to live — which is such an odd dichotomy, parts of life stand still and feel as though trapped in another universe, and other parts speed forward, unaware of the grief that pops up randomly. But we are “okay”, just taking life one day at a time.

The kids are doing well, all things considered. They still are grieving Sophie (naturally), and sometimes there are things they remember having at home that are gone forever. We recently read a wonderful book, “The Moon is Always Round”, and given its deep theological truth, it’s actually become an awesome phrase we remind one another of often — “The Moon is Always Round”. I am proud of them though, this has been a really hard season of life, one that you still have to keep walking forward in, and they’ve handled it with great faith and trust that God is good, and we are together, and all things are being made new. While it doesn’t erase the pain and loss, we actually have a real living hope.

The house is closer to demo in the next few weeks. Lots of weird setbacks have slowed things down. But once demo happens, we’ll be closer to reconstruction, and that is a big blessing — a hopeful thing to look forward to. This week, the dumpster should get moved, and we’ll get our camper out of the garage to see if the smoke damage is permanent or can be cleaned. We aren’t particularly hopeful, as everything inside the house that wasn’t burned is still toxically smoke damaged — but we shall see. Thankfully we had the camper insured too, so worst case, we start over there too.

We have met with our architect for the rebuild, and he had some clever ways to keep our home very similar (rebuilt on existing foundation), but update it, improve it for a family of five — that was encouraging. We also have an amazing team helping us with the rebuild. The company’s owner sends his kids to Clara’s School, and he’s an alumnus of my school. He goes to church with our State Farm Agent, and their team has a lot of great experience. They have assured us, we’ll be thrilled going home. Pray for us there — so many decisions to make, and neither of us ever dreamed of wanting to build a home. BUT, we are grateful — truly. It is beauty from ashes, literally.

I also had surgery in February, a tumor in my right ear (had one 9 years ago, grew back), but after a long surgery and recovery, all is well for now. In 6-9 months, we’ll revisit it, open up my head again to ensure it didn’t return, and see what happens. Admittedly, I was actually nervous. I wasn’t last time I had the surgery, but I was 29, newlywed, and had no kids. This time around it had me nervous… I hate to admit it. I have three little kids now, we just lost our home, a member of our family died — I was truly wondering, “what is next…? Will something worse happen?”, mercifully all is well for now!

Today we met a really lovely doctor, but after it came up about the fire, losing everything, etc — she said, you know… the percentage of folks who become missionaries after a house fire is surprisingly high, might be worth paying attention to where God is leading you, and what He’s saying. I loved it. Truly, I have no idea how God is going to use all this. BUT, I do know He will. And perhaps it will not be with moving overseas for missions — but using this tragedy, and learning how to walk through the Valley of the Shadow, and learning to trust the Lord, and show others that the stories are true. Perhaps it’s the balance of holding grief, sorrow, and loss in one hand — while the other hand is holding onto hope, the Word Himself.

There are more thoughts certainly, but for now, a “long” but quick update seemed appropriate.

Thank you for praying, for asking on us, for meals, for loving us well. Our community has been a balm to our souls.