Thursday, May 5, 2011

Perspective

After losing Cooper, I have noticed a big change in my perspective on things and what is really important in life. I used to take too many things for granted. Now I have learned to appreciate the things I have been given. Things that would have really bothered me in the past have not so much in the past year. A good example is my reaction to the tornado that destroyed parts of my neighborhood on April 16th. Now I am not going to lie about how frightened I was when the tornado ripped through. I was definitely freaking out as my house was violently shaking and telling God that as much as I wanted to see Cooper again I was not ready to go yet. The tornado passed and I walked outside to see the damage. Once I realized that very few of my neighbors were at home and the ones that were there were okay, I had an amazing calm come over me. I was fine, our house was standing, and no one in our neighborhood was hurt. My house, the two houses beside us only had tree and roof damage. The two houses on the other side of our street had large holes in their homes but were still standing. The next street over had a house lifted off its foundation and sat down the backyard. Homes in the two subdivisions flanking our subdivision had several homes just destroyed. But no one was hurt. About an hour later after the tornado, a neighbor from the cul-da-sac directly across our house came home from a party. She started majorly flipping out. Her home was still there. No major damage. No trees on her home. The whole family was away from home when the tornado came through. Still no one could talk to her and calm her down-not even a tad. Even her next door neighbor (who had a giant hole in the side of her own house) yelled across the yard that she was being ridiculous and needed to calm down. She continued to flip out so I just walked away. I just could not deal with it. How could someone just not see how lucky they were in a moment like that? Even weeks later after dealing with clean-up, roofers and our insurance company, I am still grateful and know how lucky we were. Things could have been worse. Houses are material things are fixable and replaceable.