About the Song

In a one-year span (June 2012-2013), my beautiful hometown suffered two record-setting wildfires. In total, around 70,000 people were evacuated, four lost their lives, and roughly 850 homes were destroyed.

It’s an odd experience, watching the smoke, watching the news, unable to sleep because of what might be happening while you’re unaware, until finally you flee the home you love with whatever fits in your car–providing you have time to pack it.

For several anxious days during each fire, I was glued to my computer, watching the disaster coverage and my Twitter feed. Interspersed among the tweets from the Sheriff’s office, the updates from the forest service and the evacuation notices were messages like this from individuals around the country and around the world:

When you live through something like this–a fire, a flood, a hurricane, anything that threatens your life and your loved-ones–you start to understand the comfort it is to know that people are praying for you at such a time. I don’t believe you can pray for someone without feeling a desire to contribute to their well-being, and so it proved in these cases. So many people stepped forward to provide food, shelter, supplies, animal care, transportation… each contribution an unspoken prayer for our welfare, and each contribution in itself an answer to prayer, delivered by human messengers.

I am so thankful for those who prayed for me during that time, in thought or in word or in action. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.

By the way, the words to this song were composed during a 10-hour drive home from my parents’ house after the evacuation notice had been lifted in my neighborhood. Driving isn’t a great time to be writing lyrics, so I repeated them over and over in my head until we stopped for lunch and I could scribble them on the back of the receipt.