Important Reminders from God

I am a firm believer in divine intervention. God is everywhere, and He is always inserting his wisdom and guidance in to everyday life. I will be the first to admit that I am often oblivious to His daily teachings, but in the past week, He has made me aware of some pretty important lessons and reminders.

Lesson 1: Husband and I can handle bringing our daughter into the world. About a week ago, I had some symptoms that I knew I shouldn't ignore. I calmly alerted Husband that we should make a trip to the hospital to get things checked out. Bless his heart, Husband has a tendency to flip out in "crisis" situations, so I knew I had to remain calm to hopefully keep his reaction in check. Fortunately, we spent an hour and a half in labor and delivery and found out that everything was fine. However, we learned that when it's time to get to the hospital and we're home, we can handle it. We are prepared.

Lesson 2: We have a plan in place for tornado warnings. When we arrived home from the hospital around 11 p.m. that evening, we promptly crashed because we were so tired. At around 7:30 the following morning, our weather radio alerted us to a tornado warning for our area. We managed to get our cats into our safe place and kept checking the warnings via our phones until we knew things were safe (and fortunately, no tornado came through our area). This opened up a discussion of experiencing a tornado warning when our little one is here and what to do. It felt good to have this dialogue because often times, you don't have the opportunity to discuss what to do until it's too late.

The view from our apartment the night of the fire alarm.
Mad love for first responders.

Lesson 3: We have a plan in place for a fire alarm. A couple of days after the tornado warning, we experienced a fire alarm. We were both in bed, just about to fall asleep, when all of the fire alarms in our apartment building went off. It took us several seconds to realize that getting out of the apartment was a good idea, but I did a quick check of our own apartment to see if anything was amiss. When we went outside, we were greeted by all of our neighbors in our breezeway and everyone was questioning what was going on. The alarm was set off at the opposite end of our building, and fortunately, it appeared to be a false alarm. However, this was another instance of opening dialogue for a "what do we do?" situation. And we discussed in length what is necessary to getting out of our apartment safely in the event of a fire/fire alarm.

We had never bridged these topics, but with the little one on her way, I'm so thankful that we now have plans in place in the event of a tornado or fire or whatever force of nature comes our way. I genuinely don't think we would have had these discussions had it not been for these fortunate false alarms. My conclusion? God was opening our eyes to what we should prepare for - just in case - since we'll have a helpless little human relying on us to protect her. I take these lessons to heart.

"Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." 

- Isaiah 41:10