How the Blessed Mother was present in our house fire

It was a call no one wants to receive. Even worse, I was stuck on the other side of the country. The brief birthday weekend I had planned to spend with one of my best friends in California turned to a weeklong stay after severe winter weather hit Tennessee and I could not get home. I changed my flight twice because of the ice and weather, but I was finally going home on Sunday. On Saturday night we were watching the NFL playoffs when my daughter called sobbing. She was so hysterical all I made out was “fire”. I finally understood she was telling me our house was on fire.

After I was able to touchdown in Tennessee and make my way home, we started sifting through the rubble and determining what was salvageable and what was not. Thankfully, we were blessed that only part of our house burned, leaving the bedrooms and office with only smoke damage. It would not be until a few days later, and after the fog of shock had dissipated, when I made another of the countless trips to the burned house, that I discovered something that reminded me how loved we are by the Lord Jesus and by our Blessed Mother. It was a rosary.

It was not just A rosary. It was multiple rosaries. As we sorted through the things left behind, I noticed our cedar chest that was in one of the rooms destroyed by the fire had remained basically untouched. It was the chest that had all my father’s military records, special photos, and items that were irreplaceable. As I opened it and ran my hand over the items to determine if anything had been damaged, I noticed a rosary and picked it up. It must have been an extra one I did not use often and I apparently placed it in the cedar chest for safe keeping.

Later, as I was sorting through items in my office and bedroom, I realized there were rosaries in those rooms as well. My daughter had many rosaries hanging on her bedroom wall on a mounted rosary holder. That room was untouched by the fire as well.

As terrible as the loss of our home has been, it brings me comfort and a sense of encouragement to know the ONLY rooms in our house where there was a rosary are the only rooms in the home that received smoke damage but were not touched by the flames. There is no fire of hell, or home, that can touch the Lord Jesus, but those flames cannot touch Our Blessed Lady either. It is safe to say that going forward, a rosary will be in every single room of our home after it is rebuilt. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.