Storm warning

It was March 2001 when I moved in with my husband Joe. Just a few months later we were in the middle of tornado season in Oklahoma. Our closet was the hidey hole when the spring weather got crazy. One year, for my birthday, we set out to buy a sauna and came home with a tornado shelter. That was probably the best investment we ever made.

Early on, I remember watching Joe every time storms would pop up. He’d stopped whatever he was doing and put his shoes on. In the springtime he even left his shoes beside the bed and if it stormed in the middle of the night, he put them on before he ever walked out of the bedroom. It was just one of those quirky habits and finally one night I questioned him about it. His response was so simple. “If the house got hit by a tornado, would you want to be walking around all that debris in bare feet?” I’d never thought of it that way, but I also had never been in an actual tornado.

Joe had been.

Needless to say, from that point forward I followed his lead. To this day I leave a pair of shoes by the bed just in case.

Fast forward to this past weekend. November rolled in like a lion. Our niece woke me out of a dead sleep early Sunday morning at 4am. Thank goodness she called. I sat up, put my shoes on, and the tornado sirens started wailing. There was no time for harnesses and leashes. I just told the girls to follow me and off to the shelter we headed. My tornado shelter is above ground inside the garage. I was shocked at how easy it was to get the dogs inside, and how calm they were while we waited. The storm subsided and luckily all was well, no damage was done.

But I was ready, shoes and all.

While I don’t like having to endure these scary situations alone now, I’m thankful that my Joe got the message to our dogs to trust me and just follow me into the shelter. Any other time Grace would have been hiding behind the curtains in the living room and Hope would have run back to get under the bedcovers, and it would have been chaos trying to get them into the shelter.

Tonight, I’m grateful for several things. That Joe shared his shoe ritual with me, that I got a tornado shelter instead of a sauna for my birthday, and that the dogs listened to whatever heavenly whispers were being sent.

Even though I’m so far out of my comfort zone being alone, every new challenge makes me realize just how strong I am.