Cardboard Fires

I love having a woodstove at this time of year. Though I hate to admit it, my husband is the best fire starter in the family. He is very Boy Scout about the whole process. He follows procedure and steps till he arrives at a hot roaring blaze. First, he lays his twigs and arranges them so the right amount of airflow occurs. Later, when he has achieved his coal bed he lays on the larger pieces layering them just so. Within minutes we have a hot sustainable fire.

I, on the other hand, am no Boy Scout. I am impatient and always looking for instant results with minimal effort and time. So instead of establishing the necessary coal bed I skip right to cardboard. Cardboard catches fire quickly and creates what appears to be a large roaring fire. Then when I have this wonderful illusion going, I throw on a large piece of wood and blow really hard on it as I keep my fingers crossed. Inevitably the cardboard burns up quickly and the wood below it doesn't catch fire and I'm left with a smoky mess.

I keep trying to make this system work by throwing more and more cardboard on hoping that a miracle will occur and my wood will catch fire without a well established coal bed. I keep hoping to trick the system and succeed in fire starting for impatient people. But it never works and as a result I fight with my woodstove for a couple of hours instead of taking the proper steps and having a decent fire in 20 minutes or so. They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. I guess that makes me an insane fire starter. You might think that I'd learn the lesson with so much evidence stacked against me. But I confess I still struggle with my cardboard fires trying to believe this is a process I can one day beat.

One day I thought I had just achieved my moment of glory. I had a particularly great cardboard fire going, where for a few brief moments the flames were high and looked successful. Of course it was all a ruse because it quickly petered out. For some reason the scene made me think of religion, specifically a checklist system of particular behaviors. What I realized was, this system can easily look like a roaring, sustainable fire. But it is a relationship with God that makes the sustainable fire, one you can warm yourself by. Faith by the checklist leaves one with a cardboard fire; you may see the bright flames, but they will quickly die out and leave you cold to the bone. Now, more than ever, I long for the genuine warmth of a sustainable fire rather than the tease of a quick, high flame. In the end, one can see it's clearly worth the extra effort.