Margin of Error

Those of you who've been reading this blog for a while know that I am terrified of storms, especially when the weather guys say the "t" word ... tornado. And I'm sure that most of you have seen on the news about all the tornadoes yesterday on the plains, the last I read it was close to 100 tornadoes in like 15 hours. When the Storm Prediction Center issued a rare high risk warning a few days ahead of the storms and used the words "life-threatening" and "catastrophic," my fear mode shifted into overdrive and I was worked up for three days worrying about the coming bad weather. This time, however, my fear was much deeper than being afraid that I would experience a tornado at my house ... this time, I was beyond terrified for my children, especially Matt and his little family since they live right in the middle of what the weather guys were saying was the target area with the greatest risk for a tornado outbreak. Thankfully, though there were tornadoes all around them, none of them touched down in their town and they are safe in their apartment tonight.

Remember how irrational I was when I had a leak in my basement and cracks in the floor? Well ... some might argue that my fear of the potential severe storms caused my irrational thinking to rise to a whole new level (because you all know that in my mind, if I tornado was spawned anywhere in the Kansas City area, it would, of course, hit my house ... just like the cracks in my basement were going to cause my house to cave in or my furnace to explode). I spent most of yesterday morning building a little fort of sorts in my basement for me and Julie and Ollie. I cleared out the southwest corner of the basement (because that's where I've always been told is the safest place), only to decide to get online and Google "safest corner of a basement in a tornado" and discover it's actually the northeast corner that most experts say offers the most protection. So I spent most of the afternoon cleaning out the opposite corner of the basement and moving my fort. Oddly enough, the northeast corner is where I had always gone to before people told me to go to the southwest corner ... my gut told me that it felt the safest, and for at least once in my life, my gut was correct.

There are sturdy, heavy wooden shelves that are attached to the concrete wall in the northeast corner of my basement, and there are water pipes there that come in from underground. I put Julie and Ollie's kennels in the space between the shelves and the pipes, and then bungee corded their kennels to the water pipes ... not crazy at all ... remember the end of the movie Twister when they used their leather belts to hang on to the water pipes? I made myself a bed out of sleeping bags and blankets under the shelves, and stocked my little cubby with food, water, meds, radio, flashlight, hiking boots, first aid kit and a sweatshirt. I dragged one of my twin-size mattresses downstairs and placed it on top of an 8-foot heavy table, and then positioned the table in front of my hiding place under the shelves, being sure to leave enough space so that I could pull the mattress off the table and cover myself and my dogs should the sirens start blaring. Then I decided to turn another 8-foot table on its side and slide it up against the standing table, creating what I hoped would be a barrier from flying debris. When I finished, I stood back and looked at my little fort and hoped it would protect me and my hounds should a tornado indeed strike my house.

I spent the evening glued to the Internet and the television monitoring the unfolding outbreak of tornadoes, and the more the weather guys said that the storms would hit Kansas City after midnight, the more I wondered if my cubby under the shelves and the dogs' bungeed kennels would keep us safe. For all the weather guys who were saying that it was a sure thing that the storms were going to roll into the metro, my favorite Fox weather guy kept saying, "There's a chance we may see nothing but wind from this system ... there's a big question mark as to whether the storms will lose some of their intensity and when they will enter our area. There could be a fairly wide margin of error in the severity of what we will experience in Kansas City." Turns out, thankfully, that he was correct ... we got nothing more than some sprinkles of rain and strong winds. I didn't know that, however, when I finally headed to the basement around 12:30 a.m. and locked Julie and Ollie into their kennels and crawled (quite literally) into my makeshift bed under the shelves. It was when I woke up around 3:00 a.m. and checked the local news website that I found out that Kansas City was in the clear and gratefully came upstairs and climbed into bed with my equally grateful dogs.

This morning at church, the preacher began a new series called Guardrails, based on Ephesians 5:15-17. A lot of what he said today hit home with me, and I've got some posts churning in my mind about it that I'll be penning in the next few days. But when he used the words "margin of error" this morning, I couldn't help but think about the weather guy's words yesterday and how relieved I was that the margin of error on the severity of the storms when they arrived in our area landed on the side of the storms missing us. And the more I've thought about it today, the more I've thought about my own margin of error and how often God keeps me safe and protects me from sure disaster.

Thank You, Lord ... for protecting us yesterday ... thank You for watching over us in the storms of life ... thank You for always being my safe place to hide ... thank You that You alone are perfect ... thank You that there's no margin of error with You.