Wake up call

It is funny to me how much we really sweat the small stuff and don't even realize how trivial it is.

The past few days in and around Oklahoma have been intense, with the tornado in Joplin then the tornado's in Oklahoma and Kansas last night... When I was driving home from work yesterday late afternoon the news was already talking about the HUGE storms and tornado's making their way through Oklahoma and the news anchor's saying that the size of SOME of the tornado's could be as large as Joplin's. Now living in Oklahoma all my life I really don't scare too easily regarding tornado's. It is rare that I actually hunker down, normally I am outside watching for them heading my way... but last night I was actually worried, more than worried, downright concerned. I did something that i have never done before... I packed a bag. I packed a bag that contained all important information, my nice jewelry, clothes for Lucien, Michael and myself, toothbrushes, got some of our water bottles filled up, threw in some of Lucien's cereal bars and waited... and watched the storms move through OKC, through Bartlesville and finally they moved into our neck of the woods. For some reason the way the storm curved south Tulsa got hit a little bit later than mid-town and downtown so we got to watch video of everything going on downtown, foreseeing what was coming our way.Luckily for us, we only got some crazy strong winds and a lot of rain in a short amount of time.

But, it called my attention to what I had packed in our bags, what was really important.. one thing that I did not mention that I packed was Lucien's baby book, baby scrapbook and Michael's and my wedding photo album. I think overall the baby book was the most important thing to me that I packed.. and then I think of all of the people that lost everything, many most likely didn't have time to grab their children's baby books, and that can never be recovered. Some people have lost loved ones in the wake of these storms, the 16 month old baby that was killed in Oklahoma last night, the woman that had a heart attack and died when she was told that her father was killed in Joplin and my heart just breaks.

I then received some gut wrenching news about some friends of mine and Michael's this morning. I won't tell their story as it is not mine to tell, but they now have their own storm that they will have to weather... and all over again I realize how trivial so many things are. It is so easy to get bogged down in day to day activities and not really think about what is important, and for me that is my faith and my family. While the storms were heading my way Michael and I were discussing where we could go in our house that would be the safest and it was determined that Lucien and I would go in one closet and Michael in another (we have a really open floorplan so there are not a lot of good places to go) and I realized that if we had to quickly move to where it is safe my only thought would be about my child, my husband and my family taking cover in other homes... no bags, no important papers, just the people that I love the most... I guess that was my wake up call.