The first thing we learned was how to make biscuits.

He handed us all pages from a newspaper, and had us roll the edges inward, around the outside, until we had what resembled a biscuit from one side and a bowl from the other side. With one final smoosh, it became a ball of newspaper.

I’ve started a lot of fires, but I’ve never worked with coal before. This was all new. My sons and I were taking an all-day class on blacksmithing, and we were working with traditional coal forges. Step one: light the forge.

Along the edges of the forge were the leftovers from the last guy’s fire. The instructor showed us the difference between clinkers and coke. Clinkers are the melted together impurities in the coal, which are to be thrown away. They don’t burn up, and can clog your airflow if not removed. Coke was kind of like popcorn coal. It had been warmed and expanded, but hadn’t been burned away. This coke would be easier to catch fire than solid coal.

We lit the 3 newspaper biscuits and piled the coke on top. But we were missing one thing.

At this point, he turned the fan on. We each had a fan inside the chimney, controlled by a switch. The airflow was then controlled by a lever next to the forge, giving us the ability to make the fire as hot or as cool as we wanted. A hot fire is necessary to speed up the process of blacksmithing. With a cold fire, the steel or iron wouldn’t get hot enough quickly enough to pound into new shapes. With a fire that was too hot, it would be easy to accidentally burn up your steel, as well as inefficiently burn up all of your coal while hammering.

Our biggest problem that day, aside from our tired forearms, was remembering to turn the airflow up when we stepped up and put our steel into the fire, and remembering to turn it back down when we took the hot steel back to the anvil.

Often I would check on my son only to find him standing by the forge, waiting for his steel to get hot, but his airflow was closed off. The fire wasn’t hot enough.

One time when I noticed this, I made the mistake of opening his airflow too fast. This resulted in a huge explosion and shower of hot coals volcanoing up from the forge all over the workspace. The coals had formed a crust and the quick burst of air had caused the now super hot coals to burst up and break the crust, raining down fiery popcorn all over. Needless to say he wasn’t too happy with me.

As I’ve embarked on the journey of personal story work, I’ve found a lot of parallels to a coal forge. It’s helpful to start with something easily flammable. Biscuits of story, bits of traumas or pain points that have been pre-cooked. These are parts of my story I’ve been aware of, at least a little bit, but wasn’t aware of how much they affected me.

But then, in this analogy, those biscuits and coke don’t get hot enough to melt a hard bit of steel. We have to rediscover the coal. These are the more intricate components and realities that we often have subconsciously ignored or blown off. We have to add air- giving these wounded places space to be true. If we don’t, we cannot heal. The fire doesn’t get hot enough, and we never actually move forward in health. We simply continue to simmer and fester.

And here’s a reality that I’m personally discovering: when air is added, often it erupts. Start to crack the dam of emotions– start to allow myself to be needy– and it suddenly gets beyond my control. It can spill out and rain down. It can even burn people. But here’s another truth: If I don’t, the pain will still leak, just in sneaky and much more harmful ways.

Bottling it up, and crusting it over does not lead to health. It leads to disaster. It is the opposite of the gospel. It is evil at work in a coordinated attack.

How are you making efforts towards uncovering parts of your story that have gone too long without air?

What could you do to continue allowing your soul to be restored so that you can offer that restorative presence to the world around you?

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Cody Buriff, Chief of Resources and Experiences