Growing up, I remember when we would all huddle in the basement whenever there was a bad storm or a tornado warning. Mom would wake me up in the middle of the night, wrap me in a blanket and carry me downstairs so we were all safe together and away from the windows. The most important thing to me was grabbing my favorite stuffed animal on the way, just in case the house collapsed and I lost everything else.
As I got older, I often thought about what things would be important to me if I could have nothing else. What would I grab if there was a fire, a tornado, or some other disaster? My laptop with hundreds of pictures on it, scrapbooks, a family heirloom? What would it be?
This weekend I was awaked at midnight to the tornado siren blaring. The siren sits a mere 100 yards from our house, but it still took me a few seconds to realize what the noise was after Mike shook me awake. He flipped on the news and we saw the severe weather pattern with funnel clouds lining the screen in all the counties around us. We grabbed a blanket, the cell phones on the nightstand and went downstairs.
So what was most important for me to have?
My husband.
We called our families to make sure they were safe, and that was it. That was all that really mattered. I didn’t sit downstairs wishing I could carry down a box of possessions in case the storm took out our house. I had everything I needed in the basement with me. I looked down to make sure my wedding ring was on my finger (which of course it was), and knew that was the only thing I would have darted back upstairs to get.
The storms blew past and there was no damage done. We went upstairs and as I crawled back into bed, and I silently thanked God for the precious gift He had given me in my husband.
He knew exactly what I needed.
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