Our miracle

"Miracles come in moments. Be ready and willing."

As I sit down to write this, I realize that I am a different person than I was a week ago. My family and I experienced a life changing event last Wednesday night.  As anyone close to me knows, our house burnt completely to the ground after 11:00pm on December 1st, 2010. The 911 call was placed at 11:08pm.  The few minutes leading up to that literally determined the course of the rest of our lives.

Ian and I were up late together that night.  I was working on putting together the flower ideas for our wedding to meet with our florist the next evening.  We were joking, laughing, having a mid-week cocktail and in wonderful spirits.  I distinctly remember thinking that day how close to perfect things really were: I was planning my wedding, loving my new job, and excited for Lauren's second Christmas.  Christmas was right around the corner and I was busy planning, stocking away surprises for the kids, plotting the perfect gift wrapping scheme...all of the things that any mother does for her family. (Ok, I'm a little over the top with gift wrap; my perfectionism tends to peak at the holidays!) That all changed that night.

Ian and I heard a loud "boom" come from the garage.  The first time it happened, we didn't stop everything. About five minutes probably went by. Five minutes of our garage burning down and we had no idea. The second "boom" we heard, we stopped what we were doing.  We knew it was in the garage. As we walked back to listen, Ian was literally a few feet away from the back kitchen door. If Ian had opened that door, the back draft surely would have killed him right before my eyes. Something made him think to not open the door but instead to go around the front of the house. We thought there was a robber in the garage, and we didn't want to open the door to face him and let him in our house.

Ian ran back in and screamed to get the kids, the whole thing was on fire.  I sprinted up the stairs, screamed like a drill sergeant at Audrey fire, fire, fire, fire, get up, get up, get up. She did. I grabbed Lauren and we ran back down the stairs and out the front door. The whole thing probably took one minute. None of us even had shoes on. The rest of the night was a blur. We went to bed exhausted at 3:30am.

There are so many things on my mind these days that it's a wonder I get from Point A to Point B anymore. But I can not stop thinking about that one minute; the one minute that it took to get the children out of the house and away from the fire. One minute. How many minutes of our lives are wasted?  Minutes spent watching TV, cleaning, waiting in line. That one minute determined our futures. Every minute with our children after that night has been a miracle. Their lives are so precious, so so so precious.

"The only way to live is to accept each minute as an unrepeatable miracle, which is exactly what it is: a miracle and unrepeatable."

♥ V :)