Forty-seven(ish) year ago I had an experience that I will never forget. I went through the 1979 tornado in Wichita Falls that was part of the Terrible Tuesday series of tornadoes. I was a ten-year-old and was more interested in catching frogs than making life or death decisions.
The family was sitting and having dinner. There was music playing on the local disco-rock station and I kid you not, it was a song titled, “Blow Away” by George Harrison that was playing when the DJ told everyone to take shelter and the sirens sounded. The family sprang into action, grabbing mattresses and piling them in the hall. As the youngest apparently it was important that I was buried under more stuff than anyone else.
My brother and dad watched the monster as it approached our house. I’ll never forget stories they told me about watching until they saw a pickup a block away start tumbling towards the tornado. The block across from our house was mostly empty field. I will also never forget laying beneath my entire family yelling pray, at ten, I was calling my family to pray to God for protection and thinking I was going to get crushed to death before the tornado could take me out. I had my sister, brother, mother, and father on top of me as far as I could tell. When it settled down my mother warned we could be in the eye and not to be too fast to leave our protection. Eventually we went outside. Everything familiar was gone. Half a block from our house – No more street signs. No more landmarks. No houses where lots of houses stood a half-hour ago.
It’s weird how that day shaped me. At ten, I learned that everything in your life can change in a heartbeat because of things completely outside of your control. Comfort and normalcy could be wiped out. Friends you’d had all your life could be swept away. It really added a sense of nothing is certain or concrete to my life.
Never assume tomorrow. Don’t waste your opportunities today. Always, always trust in God and seek His favor and protection.
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