Clinging to the Toilet

On the way to Memphis last weekend, I read an article in the May issue of "Woman's Day" magazine by Traci Schrader. On May 4, 2007, Greensburg, Kansas, where Traci and her two sons lived, was leveled by a giant tornado that was estimated to be two miles wide. She says, "The wind made a terrible racket. I yelled, "Get down!" and hunched over Paden with Lee between us, all of us hugging the toilet bowl, with that [futon] mattress over us. In the next instant, I could feel the mattress lifting, then it was gone and the walls were lifting. The tank was lifted off the toilet. I was screaming, "Lord! Protect my children!" The boys were screaming and praying." Later in the article, Traci says, "Our house was totally gone. We're not talking fallen-down walls and rubble. There was no house, nothing left!...Except for the base of the toilet, my house was gone."

But the best part is this: Traci went on to talk about the things that she and her family found in the rubble...pieces of her chili pepper collection, one of the boys' baby blankets, and a piece of a wooden cow that her grandfather had whittled for her. She says, "The one piece of furniture we found was my dresser. It was totally empty, except the top drawer still had my Bible inside." Now, is that not God?

That article brought tears to my eyes and I remembered the Bible verse that said that God's word will not return void. God's word was not destroyed during that tornado! I wonder how long Traci's Bible had been in that drawer? A few days? A month? Five years? The fact is, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if Traci hurridly stuck the Bible in the drawer two seconds before the tornado struck because God's word endures. It endures the storms of life. It endures the heart break of starting over and of going forward. It is the very foundation that we are to build our lives on and just as Jesus' parable says, "And when the storms [of life] came, his house was not destroyed because he built his house on a firm foundation."

Wayne and I have had to replace both the toilets in our house since we've lived in our current home. Now, I'm no plumber, but I've half-way watched Wayne as he has put these toilets in. If my memory serves, the base of the toilet is just "sealed" on the the hole at the floor with this putty-looking gel stuff. No cement. No super glue. Knowing what I "think" I know about toilets, how is it that the very back of the toilet was blown away and the actual toilet itself was not totally gone, also? How could a rubbery looking seal hold a mother and her two sons close during a terrible storm? I believe that when we cling to the one thing that we know and trust we can weather the storm. Even if we have to cling to the toilet bowl.