Candles Burn, So Do I
We had set fire to the church. Or so they believed.
Early June, 2023
Excerpt from ‘Deep Dive’
Voice of Willow
Our kids’ worlds were fraying, thread by thread. We were fraying with them. Their birthday dreams, once bright, shattered like glass on a cold, unforgiving floor.
Both were born in the winter season, just five days apart—two years between them, but their excitement had always intertwined, birthdays, a shared anticipation stretching for months. Plans meticulously crafted, invitations imagined, celebrations envisioned.
JJ had dreamed of a weekend away with her closest friends—her church friends. I, too, had looked forward to that time, surrounded by the people I had once called my own. But then everything crumbled.
Gerry wouldn’t speak to me. The others—scattered, distant, each nursing their own wounds.
In the wreckage, we salvaged what we could. A quiet movie outing for JJ with one of the few friends who remained by a thread—a whisper of what might have been.
For Drew, though, the devastation was absolute. His birthday plans hadn’t just crumbled—they had detonated.
The blueprint had been set: a camping trip, a weekend of adventure. His best friend from birth, Kris, and Kris’s dad, JD, had been part of the plan from the beginning, alongside Cameron and Drew. Flyers were designed and distributed. Excitement pulsed in every detail.
And then—JD pulled out. And Kris wasn’t coming.
We had set fire to the church. Or so they believed.
As the extended family of Pastor Austin, Kris and JD couldn’t be seen aligning themselves with the embers of our supposed destruction.
We weren’t just outcasts. We were the explosion itself.
Drew was wrecked. We tried to counsel him that others would come and that the trip wasn’t ruined. But it was never just a trip. It was Kris. The friend he had known since birth—the friend who, now, wasn’t coming.
We contacted Smitty, Shar, and Shane. In the unspoken way exile recognises exile, their presence carried a quiet, unexpected comfort.
Drew invited school friends, filling spaces with names that didn’t quite fit the shape of his grief. They came. They laughed. But they were not Kris. And no amount of company could patch the hollow place he left behind.
The campfire crackled, casting flickering shadows as we gathered close. Smitty reached for his guitar, his fingers instinctively finding familiar chords. Shar’s voice lifted raw and beautiful into the Sunday morning mist, while Shane tapped out a steady rhythm, his hands drumming against whatever he could find. We sang Waymaker, voices weaving together, lifting up something fragile yet unbroken.
You are
Way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper
Light in the darkness
My God, that is who You are
You are
Way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper
Light in the darkness
My God, that is who You are
We didn’t know what lay ahead, but we sang with all our hearts, knowing that our God was a miracle worker. We needed a miracle.
The boys from Drew’s school hesitated initially, unfamiliar with worship, but the music pulled them in. One by one, they joined, their voices tentative at first and then strong. For a moment, this was church—not the kind bound by walls, but something deeper, something real.
Then, in the middle of our makeshift gathering, Shane and Shar exchanged a glance. They pulled out an envelope and, without pretence, began to speak. Their words were for Cameron. This had been a long time coming.
The card and gift weren’t from Pastor Austin, who should have noticed and expressed gratitude long ago. Instead, they were from the families who had observed and seen. Parents who knew the weight of what Cameron had carried—years of faithfulness, pouring into the lives of children and showing up when no one else did.
Cameron never served for recognition. He had never sought praise. But now, at the close of an era, he was being thanked—not from the top of the crumbling empire, but from the people who truly mattered.
He held the card in his hands, silent for a moment. The firelight caught the shimmer of something unsaid in his eyes. This—this was the kind of gratitude that meant everything.
He tucked the card into the creased spine of his Bible, its edges resting against scriptures that had once steadied him. Two decades given—poured out like oil on an altar. Not for the sermons, not for the rituals, not for the man who claimed to speak for God. No, it was for the children—their laughter, their questions, their wonder untainted by doctrine. It was for them, and for the faith they carried—not in systems, but in their Saviour. That, at least, had made it worth it.
An exiled church member, long removed from our world, discovered us camping near their home. They joined us, drawn to the flickering firelight. We spoke in hushed tones, the warmth of the flames mirroring the quiet solace between us. In the stillness, grief intertwined with healing. I was smashed. We had upheld Austin and his rule, blind to the weight that had crushed their family. Another one. Another life unravelled while we had looked the other way.
I hadn’t seen it—not then. Only now did the truth surface, slow and unforgiving. But I had looked away. I had let the pain slip past, unseen, unheard. Again. And again. And again.
