Baby's First Duck and Cover

This is where we hung out from about 4:00 - 4:30 this morning. Turns out the hall closet is a great little storm shelter.

Jeff and I woke up a little before four am when a raging storm rolled in and cut off our electricity. I love spring storms and usually when I'm awoken by thunder and lightening I'll listen to the rain for a minute, roll over and go back to sleep. But this time the sky appeared to have an eerie greenish hue and the wind was really rockin' so I got up to check things out.

Fortunately the electricity came back quickly and I was able to listen to the weather reports on the radio. (Note to self: buy batteries for the radio.) We were under a tornado warning and were being encouraged to stay in a small, interior room on the first floor of the house.

I've never been terribly afraid of tornadoes. Living in this area I've probably been through hundreds of tornado watches and warnings in my life and never actually experienced one. But there is something different about having a baby in the house and hearing that urgent call to take cover. I was suddenly pretty nervous.

Jeff brought the babe downstairs and we hunkered down in the closet. As the reporter was talking about "cloud rotation" appearing over our area I wasn't thinking to pray eloquently, so my heart was just pleading with God, "Please protect my family." It wasn't too long until good ol' WBAP gave us the all-clear.

Sweet Bennett hardly noticed the commotion. He stirred a little when we got him up, slept soundly on the closet floor while Jeff and I listened to the radio and prayed and then he went right back to bed. Now that's my boy!

After we put Bennett down we peered out windows and stepped outside to see if there was any damage from the 60 - 70 mph winds. It seemed that everything was intact. A second investigation in the morning light confirmed that our neighborhood didn't sustain any significant damage.

As the storm moved away we settled back in bed. I enjoyed thanking God for his power and provision and watching a fantastic lightening show before drifting off to sleep.