May 2019

Ginghamsburg Senior Pastor Rachel Billups with Fort McKinley Campus Pastor Jeremiah Lewis

Special guest blog by Sarah Rossetter, MD, a practicing physician who is currently working on her first book. Sarah lives in the greater Dayton area with her husband and children.

Monday night, my husband and I ripped our three sleeping babies from their beds and sprinted downstairs to the most interior room in our basement. The phones in our pockets screamed warnings to take cover immediately, and tornado sirens blared outside. We laid our children on the couch against the basement wall and then positioned ourselves where we could see through the windows of our walk-out area. Lightning blazed across the night sky every few moments in a strobe-light fashion. Thunder claps shook our home to its foundation over and over again as my dearest love and I quietly discussed the manner in which we planned to spread our bodies over our sleeping children should the support structures above us begin to give way.

While we were hunkered down, updates continuously rolled onto the screens of our phones detailing multiple tornado touch-downs and widespread destruction in the little towns around us. Panic clawed at my throat as I read that entire sections of the town where my parents live were being described as simply “gone.” My heart rate quickened and my chest tightened when multiple calls to my parents’ cell phones went unanswered.