Something from Sunday’s sermon has been sitting with me.
The message came from Daniel 3, the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego being thrown into a fiery furnace. It’s a story I’ve heard before, but this time one particular detail caught my attention.
After they came out of the fire, they weren’t burned. Their clothes weren’t scorched. Not even a hair on their heads had been singed.
But the part that really stuck with me?
They didn’t even smell like smoke.
I kept thinking about that.
Because getting through the fire is one thing. Not carrying the fire with you when you leave is something completely different.
We all have fires.
Sometimes it’s being thrown into a new role at work before you feel ready. You don’t have all the experience. You haven’t received enough training. Maybe you’re taking on responsibilities you’ve never handled before. And whether you volunteered for it or not, suddenly you’re standing in the middle of something thinking, I have no idea how I’m going to pull this off.
And to be clear, being put in that position isn’t always a good thing. Sometimes you really weren’t given the support you needed. Sometimes expectations were unrealistic. Sometimes someone else’s poor planning became your problem. Being thrown into the fire isn’t automatically some great leadership or development strategy.
But you’re there.
So you figure it out.
You ask questions.
You make mistakes.
You learn on the fly.
You work through the uncertainty.
And somewhere along the way, the thing you weren’t sure you could do becomes something you know how to do. Eventually, you come out on the other side.
But what did you bring out with you?
Because the difficult experience can give you confidence, skills and perspective. But it can also leave you with resentment. Insecurity. A need to prove yourself. Distrust. A chip on your shoulder because you remember everyone who questioned whether you could do it in the first place.
You survived the fire. But do you still smell like smoke?
That’s the question I haven’t been able to shake.
Sometimes we spend so much time celebrating the fact that we made it through something that we don’t stop to consider how much of that experience we’re still carrying.
Maybe you had a boss who never trusted you, so now you struggle to trust the person leading you today. Maybe you worked somewhere that made you feel like you constantly had to prove your value, so even after leaving, you still approach every opportunity like an audition. Maybe you were thrown into something you weren’t prepared for and figured it out, but instead of walking away confident in what you learned, you walked away angry about how you were put in that position.
The fire is over.
The circumstances have changed.
But the smoke followed you.
And not smelling like smoke doesn’t mean pretending the fire never happened. It doesn’t mean forgetting what you went through or acting like it didn’t affect you. Some experiences should change us. Some should make us more careful. More aware. More prepared. Sometimes the lessons we learn in difficult situations are exactly what we need for whatever comes next.
Not smelling like smoke means refusing to let the fire follow you into every room you enter afterward.
Maybe that’s what struck me so much about that one small detail in Daniel 3.
Coming out of the fire wasn’t the only remarkable part. There was no evidence that the fire had changed who they were.
And maybe that’s the challenge for the rest of us.
There’s a difference between learning from the fire and carrying the smoke.
Take the lesson.
Take the confidence.
Take the skills you didn’t know you had.
Take the perspective that only comes from going through something difficult.
But the resentment? The insecurity? The anger? The constant need to prove everybody wrong?
Maybe those things belong back in the fire. The fire may always be part of your story. It may have taught you something you couldn’t have learned anywhere else.
But it doesn’t have to become your identity.
Take what the fire taught you.
Leave the smoke behind.
gathandborden.com 