Exposing Snakes

There are memories that slowly lose their edges.

You remember that something happened. You remember the people who were there. You may even remember whether it was good or painful, but the details have softened. Time has blended the colors. The exact words are gone. The room is no longer clear. What remains is more like a summary than a scene.

Then there are memories that never seem to age.

You can close your eyes and return to them. You can see the horizon. You can feel the temperature. You can hear the voices. You can remember what the ground looked like under your feet and how small you felt standing in the middle of something much larger than you.

Recently I was telling someone a familiar story from growing up, and I used a sentence that I have probably said many times:

“Until the day I die, I will remember that experience.”

The words stayed with me after the conversation ended.

Why do some experiences remain that clear?

Why can an ordinary week disappear from memory while a single afternoon follows us for the rest of our lives?

Why do certain images return decades later with meaning we could not possibly have understood when they first entered us?

I am currently coming out of what I would call a covert season. It may not appear that way from the outside. There has been work, family, movement, business, writing, and plenty happening around me. But internally, God has been leading me through a long period of solitude, recovery, remembering, and telling the truth.

For years, some of my life remained hidden even from me.

I knew the events happened, but I did not always understand how they connected. I could tell individual stories without recognizing the larger story God had been writing through them. I could remember the fire without understanding what it revealed. I could remember the darkness without recognizing the lesson hidden in the blackened ground.

That is part of why Feeling Dangerous exists.

It would not exist if God had not told me to begin living in freedom by telling my stories. It would not exist if He had not shown me that truth could serve other people. It would not exist if I had continued treating my memories as private property—things to hide, minimize, numb, rewrite, or carry alone.

The stories are not being written because every memory makes me look good.

Many do not.

They are being written because God has been faithful in every kind of terrain, and forgetting His faithfulness would be another form of hiding.

Do Not Forget What Your Eyes Have Seen

Deuteronomy 4:9 says:

“Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children.”

The original command was not a generic instruction to preserve every pleasant memory. Moses was speaking to Israel about what God had shown them, the covenant they had received, and the danger of forgetting when they entered a new season. They were being warned that what their eyes had seen could still depart from their hearts if they did not guard it.

That is what strikes me.

Seeing something once does not guarantee that I will continue living as though it is true.

I can experience God’s provision and later panic as though He has never provided.

I can be delivered from something and eventually begin romanticizing the captivity.

I can survive a season I once thought would destroy me and then forget the strength God formed in me there.

I can receive a clear answer, walk in it for a while, and later allow noise, fear, success, pain, or distraction to make the answer feel distant.

Memory must be guarded.

Not worshiped. Not exaggerated. Not used to trap us in the past. Guarded.

There is a difference between living in the past and carrying forward what God taught you there.

Deuteronomy 8 tells Israel to remember the long road through the wilderness and how God led them through it. Psalm 77 describes intentionally remembering the works and wonders of the Lord. Psalm 78 tells one generation not to hide God’s works from the next, but to tell the children so they can place their confidence in Him.

Biblical remembering is active.

It is not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. It is bringing yesterday’s evidence into today’s uncertainty.

It is testimony.

It is inheritance.

It is sometimes warfare against the lie that God has abandoned you now.

And one of the memories God has returned to me began with a wildfire on the ranch in Wyoming.

All Hands on Deck

I was still in elementary school—probably all of sixty pounds soaking wet.

One summer, a wildfire burned tens of thousands of acres around the ranch. I do not remember anyone sitting me down and asking whether I felt qualified to help. It was a ranch. There was a fire. It was all hands on deck.

I remember carrying a shovel around the edges of the grass fire and looking for anything that appeared to be my size. I was not going to overpower the entire fire. I was not operating heavy equipment or directing adults. But if a small flame appeared in the grass, if an ember jumped somewhere it should not be, or if there was a patch I could reach with the tool in my hands, I had an assignment.

There is something about growing up that way that stays with you.

You learn early that being small does not mean being useless.

You learn that responsibility is sometimes assigned by proximity. You are there. The need is there. Pick up the shovel.

You learn that a crisis has a way of making ordinary titles and categories less important. Neighbor, family member, hired hand, adult, child—everyone who could safely contribute did what he or she could do.

I do not want to romanticize wildfire.

It is destructive, unpredictable, and dangerous.

Fighting one is not a childhood adventure to recreate. I am describing what I remember from a ranch culture and a specific emergency where the adults were directing the response.

What I remember is the scale.

Fire can make land that once felt endless suddenly feel fragile. Grass, sagebrush, fences, habitat, and years of growth can disappear with frightening speed. The Wyoming wind does not negotiate. It can take a small problem and move it across the country faster than human beings can organize themselves to stop it.

For roughly a week, we fought it.

There were people everywhere. There were shovels, vehicles, smoke, exhaustion, and the constant search for whatever still needed attention. Eventually, the fire appeared to be contained.

Contained is a beautiful word when you have been watching the horizon burn.

It means the lines held.

It means the visible flames were no longer advancing.

It means you can finally begin to believe the worst may be over.

We thought it was.

The Smoke Came Back

Sometime after the fire was contained, we went into town to run errands.

This was before everyone carried a cell phone. We had a bag phone in the truck, which probably dates me more effectively than almost anything else I could say. It was communication technology, but not the kind of constant connection we now assume. You did not have a live camera on every hill, alerts vibrating on your wrist, and a group text updating every person in real time.

We were in town, away from the ranch, when we looked back toward home.

Smoke.

Massive smoke.

The kind that immediately tells you the thing you believed was over is not over.

The ranch was burning again.

I remember the urgency of the return. Errands stopped mattering. Whatever pace we had been moving at changed instantly. We sprinted back toward the place we had just spent days trying to protect.

What we understood at the time was that the fire had remained alive below what we could easily see. Dense vegetation and underground fuels can continue smoldering after the visible front has passed. Wind can carry embers into dry fuel beyond a line and start another fire. We had seen black ground and the absence of obvious flames and concluded the danger was gone.

But the surface was telling only part of the story.

That lesson has followed me into nearly every area of life.

Something can look contained and still be burning underneath.

An addiction can lose its visible flames while the agreement feeding it remains alive.

A marriage can become quiet without becoming healed.

A person can stop talking about pain without finding peace.

A business can look stable while fear, leverage, secrecy, or exhaustion smolders below the numbers.

A man can appear calm while anger moves through the roots.

A family can remove one dangerous influence without filling the cleared space with truth, presence, community, and the Spirit of God.

The visible crisis is not always the whole fire.

That does not mean we should become suspicious of every peaceful season or live in constant paranoia. It means we should not confuse the absence of visible flames with complete restoration. Real containment requires attention to what remains hot below the surface.

The fire broke out again, and once again people came together to fight it. After more days, a blessed rain, the fire reaching rock where it could no longer find the same fuel, and the work of many hands, it was finally contained.

The ranch remained.

But it did not look the same.

Standing in the Black

The most surreal experience came after the flames had moved through.

I remember standing in the middle of the burn during the day.

The land was black from eye to eye.

Miles in every direction had been stripped of the colors and textures that normally told you where one part of the terrain ended and another began. The sagebrush was gone. The grass was gone. The subtle variations of the country had been flattened into charcoal and ash.

There was black ground until the blue sky began.

The contrast was so complete that it did not feel like an ordinary landscape anymore. It felt like standing inside an image with only two colors.

At night, it became even stranger.

There was very little light pollution where we lived. Normally, even darkness had shape. Brush, grass, hills, fences, animals, and familiar silhouettes gave the night some kind of dimension. After the fire, those indicators were gone. The ground disappeared into the sky. There was no easy reference point, no texture, and no familiar cover.

It was just blackness.

Not the darkness of a room where you know a wall is six feet away.

The darkness of an apparent void.

It felt like floating through space.

That image stayed with me, but even the blackness was not the clearest part of the memory.

The clearest part was what the black ground allowed me to see.

The Thing I Feared Most

Growing up, I was afraid of snakes.

Not in an abstract way. We had real snakes, including rattlesnakes, in country where children rode horses through brush, climbed hills, crossed rocky ground, and went on adventures far from climate-controlled rooms.

Their camouflage worked because it was designed for the exact landscape we lived in.

You learned to watch where you stepped, where you put your hands, and what might be hidden on the other side of a rock.

I remember one time when my little brother was walking beside a large concrete embankment wall. He was still a little guy. Above him, on top of the wall, a large snake was moving almost directly over his path. From where we were standing, it looked as if the snake could drop onto him.

Someone saw it and removed the threat before anything happened.

That image stayed with me too: my little brother walking without knowing what was moving above him.

That is the power of camouflage.

The danger does not have to become stronger. It only has to remain unseen long enough to get close.

On normal ground, a snake could disappear into the colors around it. Sage, dirt, rock, shadow, and movement all helped conceal it. Even when you knew snakes existed, you could not always see where one was.

Fear thrives in that uncertainty.

Is one there?

How close is it?

Did I hear something?

Am I about to step into danger I cannot see?

Then the fire changed the background.

The Fire Removed the Camouflage

After the burn, the snakes stood out against the black.

In my memory, they looked green—bright, almost reflective lines moving across soot and ash. Their skin appeared new and shiny. Against the black ground, they were impossible to miss. Something that could once disappear within a few feet of you could now be seen from what felt like a football field away.

As a child, I understood that the heat had caused the snakes to shed their skin. Looking back as an adult, I cannot prove that explanation. Snakes naturally shed as part of their life cycle, and the timing can be influenced by biology, condition, season, and species. Some may survive fire by finding refuge underground or within rocks, while others may be killed. Fire also changes habitat and removes the vegetation that once concealed them.

So I will not turn a childhood explanation into scientific certainty.

But I will tell you exactly what my eyes remember:

Bright, reflective snakes moving across miles of black ground with nowhere left to hide.

The fire did not create the snakes.

They had been there before.

The fire did not make them dangerous.

They had always carried the same threat.

The fire changed what surrounded them.

It burned away the camouflage.

For the first time, I could see the thing I feared coming.

That summer, the snakes we encountered in the burned area were dealt with as threats. I remember the feeling more than the count: the enemy had lost the advantage of surprise.

Once the threat could be seen, fear changed.

The snake was still a snake. I still respected the danger. But it no longer possessed the same invisible power. I did not have to imagine it hiding behind every object. I could see its location. I could create distance. I could warn someone. The adults could respond.

What had once placed us in a permanent defensive posture had become visible enough to confront.

The threat did not become smaller.

It became exposed.

Fire Does Not Always Mean Abandonment

For years, I probably would have described that summer only as the year of the fire.

Something terrible happened. Land burned. People worked. Rain came. The fire stopped. Snakes became easier to see.

Now I see a parable in the memory.

There have been seasons when I looked at the burned places in my life and saw only loss.

Relationships changed. Businesses failed. Money disappeared. Health suffered. Reputation burned. Addiction took ground. Plans that once gave the horizon shape were reduced to ash. Places that felt familiar became unrecognizable.

When enough burns, it can feel as though God has removed every landmark.

But some fires reveal what comfort had concealed.

That does not mean every destructive event was sent by God. It does not mean abuse, addiction, illness, betrayal, or catastrophe should be called good. It does not mean we thank God for evil or pretend the damage did not matter.

It means God is capable of meeting us in what burned and showing us truth that could no longer remain camouflaged.

Sometimes the fire reveals an appetite that had been hiding inside success.

Sometimes it reveals that a relationship was built around access rather than love.

Sometimes it reveals how much identity depended on money, applause, achievement, substances, or control.

Sometimes it reveals the lie beneath the behavior.

Sometimes it reveals who runs toward you when smoke appears on the horizon.

Sometimes it reveals a strength God placed in you long before you knew what it was for.

Sometimes it reveals that the child holding the shovel was already learning how to stand in a fight without needing to be the biggest person there.

The blackened landscape was not the goodness of God.

His presence in it was.

The destruction was not His faithfulness.

The rain, the people, the strength, the protection, the lessons, and the life still standing afterward became evidence of it.

Camouflage in Adult Life

The enemies I have faced as an adult do not usually look like green lines moving across black dirt.

They are more sophisticated than that.

They camouflage themselves as relief.

Alcohol can disguise itself as celebration, connection, confidence, or rest.

Gambling can disguise itself as opportunity, provision, skill, competition, or the one win that will fix everything.

Isolation can disguise itself as independence.

Control can disguise itself as protection.

Anger can disguise itself as strength.

Avoidance can disguise itself as patience.

Comparison can disguise itself as ambition.

Fear can disguise itself as wisdom.

Shame can disguise itself as humility.

Busyness can disguise itself as purpose.

Silence can disguise itself as peace.

Some things remain dangerous because they blend into something socially acceptable, personally familiar, or temporarily useful.

I can recognize the threat in someone else and overlook it when it is wearing the colors of my own personality.

That is what makes truth so offensive to darkness.

Truth changes the background.

It removes the environment in which a lie was able to disappear.

When I finally say, “That was not provision; it was a wager,” the camouflage weakens.

When I say, “I was not functioning freely; I was functioning while captive,” the camouflage weakens.

When I say, “I am not protecting peace; I am avoiding a necessary conversation,” the camouflage weakens.

When I say, “That voice is not conviction leading me toward God; it is accusation driving me toward hiding,” the camouflage weakens.

When I tell another person what has been happening in secret, the background changes.

When I bring a memory into the light and allow God to show me what was actually present, what once terrified me can no longer move with the same invisible authority.

Truth does not create the enemy. It exposes where the enemy has been hiding.

Go on Offense

For most of my childhood, my posture toward snakes was defensive.

Watch the ground.

Watch the brush.

Listen for the rattle.

Do not reach where you cannot see.

That caution was wise. Recklessness around real danger is not courage.

But the burned ground taught me something else: there are moments when exposure changes the nature of the fight.

When the snake could be seen from far away, we were not waiting for it to strike from cover. We could respond before it got close.

Spiritually and emotionally, many people live in constant reaction because they have never named what keeps attacking them.

They feel the anxiety but have not examined the agreement beneath it.

They feel the conflict but have not named the resentment.

They feel the financial pressure but have not exposed the appetite or secrecy feeding it.

They feel far from God but have not confronted the shame telling them to hide until they become worthy.

They feel controlled by a habit but continue using language that makes the habit sound harmless.

Going on offense does not mean becoming loud, reckless, aggressive, or obsessed with darkness. It does not mean diagnosing every problem as demonic, treating people as enemies, or attempting to fight spiritual forces through human intimidation.

It means refusing to provide camouflage for what is destroying you.

Tell the truth.

Bring the secret into trusted community.

Ask God to search what is beneath the visible behavior.

Use Scripture to identify the lie.

Seek qualified medical or mental-health care when the battle involves the body, trauma, addiction, depression, anxiety, or safety.

Repair the boundary before the threat reaches someone you love.

Stop negotiating with what God already exposed.

Offense begins with light.

Ephesians says to walk as children of light and to discern what pleases the Lord. It also describes light as exposing what darkness conceals. The point is not spectacle. The point is a life that no longer depends on darkness to continue.

The enemy is most dangerous when I keep protecting the environment it uses to hide.

The Fire Did Not Get the Final Word

When I remember that summer, I remember destruction.

I remember exhaustion.

I remember thinking the fire was contained and then looking back from town to see smoke rising again.

I remember blackness in every direction.

I remember snakes.

But I also remember rain.

I remember rock.

I remember many hands.

I remember the ranch still standing after the landscape changed.

I remember being small and still having something useful to carry.

I remember that what had frightened me most became visible.

The fire is part of the memory, but it does not own the meaning.

God’s goodness does.

That is the difference between remembering pain and remembering through faith.

Faith does not erase the smoke. It notices who was present in it.

Faith does not change black ground back to green while pretending nothing happened. It looks at what was lost, tells the truth, and still recognizes the blue sky above it.

Faith does not claim that every snake is gone. It learns what the camouflage looks like and becomes more discerning the next time.

Faith does not turn a child with a shovel into the hero of the wildfire. It thanks God that the child was surrounded by people, protection, rain, and enough grace to grow old enough to understand the lesson.

This is what I want to remember until the day I die:

The fire did not create the enemy.

It exposed where the enemy had been hiding.

The blackness did not mean God had disappeared.

It created a background against which His faithfulness became impossible to miss.

And the covert season did not erase my story.

It gave God room to return me to the memories I am now responsible to tell.

So today, I am going on offense.

Not by pretending I am fearless.

Not by charging blindly into danger.

Not by making people my enemy.

I am going on offense by refusing to forget.

I am going to guard what my eyes have seen.

I am going to tell the truth about what was hiding.

I am going to remember the rain.

I am going to tell my children.

And with every breath I am able, I am going to sing of the goodness of God.

Scripture to Carry

Deuteronomy 4:9 — Israel was commanded to guard what God had shown them and to pass it to future generations. Experiences can be witnessed by the eyes and still fade from the heart if they are not diligently remembered.

Deuteronomy 8:2 — Remembering the wilderness journey helps reveal how God led, humbled, tested, and formed His people. The difficult road becomes part of understanding His work.

Psalm 77:11–12 — In distress, the psalmist deliberately recalls and meditates on the Lord’s previous works. Remembering is a faithful response when the present feels uncertain.

Prayer

Father, thank You for the experiences You have carried me through and for the memories that remain. Thank You for being present in seasons I did not yet know how to understand.

Teach me to guard my soul diligently. Do not let fear, distraction, shame, success, pain, or the passing of time erase what my eyes have seen of Your faithfulness.

Bring back the memories I am ready to face. Give me courage to tell the truth about them without exaggeration, denial, performance, or self-protection. Show me what I understood then, what You are revealing now, and what must be passed to the next generation.

Thank You for every hand that helped when the fire was larger than me. Thank You for the rain, the rock, the people, the protection, and the grace that allowed me to keep standing. Thank You that being small never made me useless in Your hands.

Search beneath the surface of my life. Reveal anything still smoldering where visible flames have disappeared. Expose addiction, bitterness, fear, resentment, pride, secrecy, and false agreements before they spread into another part of what You entrusted to me.

Remove the camouflage from every lie. Give me discernment to recognize what is truly dangerous without turning me paranoid, suspicious, or obsessed with darkness. Keep me focused on Jesus, grounded in Scripture, surrounded by wise community, and willing to receive professional help where it is needed.

With my life laid down and my story surrendered, use what I have lived to serve someone else.

In Jesus’ name, amen.

Music Connection

“Goodness of God” — Bethel Music

This song belongs with the Field Note because it treats memory as worship. It looks across a whole life rather than isolating one easy moment. The testimony includes mornings, nights, fire, guidance, relationship, surrender, and the continued pursuit of God’s goodness.

The fire connection is obvious, but the deeper connection is remembrance.

The singer is not merely describing God’s goodness in the present tense. The song gathers evidence from an entire life and brings it into the current moment. God has been faithful as Father, Friend, Shepherd, Provider, and Guide. Remembering those identities becomes the reason to keep singing now.