Last Tuesday night was the night all the devastating storms came through Tennessee. The safest place to hide from a tornado in our house is a small oddly shaped closet in the garage that is under the stairscase that leads the bonus room. It’s barely big enough for our family of 5 and our three animals, but that’s okay, we don’t mind being close to each other.
Our Son, Anthony (14) is familiar with these drills of getting up in the middle of the night, getting dressed and taking only the necessities with us to the cramped quarters, but our 2 ½ year old Hannah wasn’t sure what to make of all this. Especially in the middle of the night when she’s usually asleep.
In these situations I try to remain calm so the kids don’t freak out, even if I’m going crazy on the inside, and I usually do okay knowing that God is going to take care of us no matter what the result of the storm. But in order to get Hannah into this closet without her freaking out I said “Hannah, lets go on an adventure”. You would have thought I said “lets go meet and play with Dora and Boots at Disney Land”. She got so excited! And for her it really was an adventure. It was a good distraction from the storm to see things through her eyes for a little while. She loved playing with the flashlight and telling us how we were all there for the adventure. Even the next day she was talking about it.
That night, while waiting in the closet for the unknown to happen, I thought about how we are supposed to be like that with God. Taking comfort from Him no matter what the adventure, and knowing He is always going to take care of us. Life would be so much easier if we could look at every situation through the eyes of a child. With their innocence and faith that everything is going to be okay because Mommy or Daddy said so. After all, God is our Father, and He gives us all the strength we need to make it though any storm that comes our way. God Bless!
Callie Dowlen.
Callie Dowlen is a full time mother of a very cool teenage boy and two beautiful girls, 2½ and 7 months. She has a wonderful supportive studying-for-the-bar husband, and she’s a part time author. They live in middle Tennessee, and you can search the magazine for many other stories by Callie!
February 12th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Beautiful… simply put… “Ah, to have the faith of a two year old…”
February 12th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Very good storie Callie. Not as good as story as yours, but I also did a blog on my site as well about my adventures of nervously awaiting if I was gonna be visited by a twister….God is good and that he got us all through it. Pray for the ones who weren’t as lucky.