Ten Minutes to get Ready

This morning, as I turned off the shower and opened the door to reach for my towel, I heard what I thought was a phone message playing from my dad. Upon getting the water out of my ears, I realized I was listening to my husband listening to a computer news clip about a tornado in Massachusetts. It was reporting on numbers (which I missed) of injured, dead, and missing. It went on to say some people had zero warning it was coming; others had up to ten minutes prior knowledge. As I stood there, naked and dripping wet, I couldn't help but think what I would do, if that same news clip happened to be a real-time warning for our own area instead. Ten minutes to know your life was about to be forever altered by disaster. Would that seem like ten life-times or more like ten seconds? If you knew you had ten minutes to potentially live or die, what would you do? What if you knew you had ten hours to prepare for a disaster? Ten days? What would be your top ten to-do lists? My heart goes out to all those affected first-hand by such an event. May the will to survive carry then in their pursuit of recovery. I'm going to dry off and get ready.