I grew up in Paradise, California. A small town, like John Mellencamp has sung about. Approximately 1.5 hours drive north of Sacramento. A Utopia, it was not, but it was HOME. Home to so many loving people.
I remember walking up and down the rocky lanes of my neighborhood, with my little red wagon… filled with eggs that my chickens had laid. I would troll my little lanes of homes, knock on my neighbors’ doors and offer them fresh laid eggs. I must have been 6 or 7 and I was so happy and proud to share my tiny bounty with familiar faces. I eventually moved away, however my grandparents, parents and many loved ones stayed behind. They knew where they were, and where they planned to stay!
Small towns are always the places we run from when we are young with big dreams, and they are ALWAYS the place we run back to once we have found ourselves and are ready to “Live Our Best Life.”
Paradise was that place. Paradise was the “home” that so many of us seek after we have had a taste of the big cities and the hustles of finding out what really makes us happy!
Paradise may have been a sleepy little town, but it was HOME and it was an idyllic place to grow up and retire. It had little to offer the young adults reaching for the stars.
However, Paradise was PARADISE for those in the Seasons of their Lives…. Precious Childhoods and Peaceful Retirements.
You couldn’t ask for anymore from a tiny town in Northern California.
I am personally devastated by the Camp Fire. This is a picture of my father’s home following the fire storm. My father was completely burned out along with 50+ Thousand others. All those I know and love have so far been accounted for… they’ve lost everything. Not a single stitch of memorabilia came with them as they struggled to get out of the flames. Not a photo, an heirloom, a trinket, not even a pre-planned escape box of important things.
The fire moved so fast that the most loved belongings were left behind… there was NO TIME to check on neighbors, friends, relatives…. We left our most cherished items behind, we forgot our cell phones and we lost our pets in the mania.
Around 8am my father’s neighbor banged on his door… He told him to LEAVE immediately! My dad wasn’t even aware there was a fire… When he opened his door to greet his neighbor, he told me it was dark and all he could hear was the roar of the fire coming up the canyon. He said it sounded like a freight train raging up the hill….
By 8:30am it was Black as Night
Paradise Vanished!
In a Blaze of Fire, Puff of Smoke, Gone…..
Gone but not Forgotten.
Paradise will rebuild… the true believers will return…
Maybe this is the question… Do you believe?
Do You Believe in PARADISE?
In some religions “Paradise” refers to “heaven as the ultimate abode of the just.”
Or the “abode of Adam and Eve…”
Or maybe just, “an ideal or idyllic place or state.”
The question must be, “Do You Believe in Paradise?”
Because if you believe, You will share your belief.
“If you build it, he will come!” ~ Bull Durham