I put my feet up on the living room couch and switched on the TV. It felt nice to relax—if only for a moment. Good Friday. A day off from my college classes. The kids—James, 14, and Leslee, 10—didn’t have school either. It seemed like forever since I didn’t have something pressing to worry about, the kids’ school events, helping them with their homework, writing my own term paper, housework, errands. I’m a single mom and sometimes it was all I could do to hold everything together.

In the back of the house I heard boys laughing and shouting. I smiled at the racket. The house hadn’t felt this alive since we’d moved to Murfreesboro a little over a year ago. I’d been thrilled when James had asked if five boys could spend the night. I was already planning to watch my seven-year-old niece, Adrian. Leslee was spending the weekend at a friend’s house. It was great to see the kids adjusting so well. That was one thing I hadn’t had to worry about.

The TV went dark. Then it flashed to a team of news anchors. “We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming so we can bring you coverage of tornado activity in the Nashville area,” one said. Tornado? Outside, rain was falling, but it wasn’t a storm. Must be someplace on the other side of the city. Still, was there something I should do? I listened for more information but didn’t get any.

That was the hardest part these days, feeling like so much depended on me. I longed to meet more people, to feel like I was part of a community. I’d gone to church, wanting to put my trust in God, to have that comfort that no matter what things would be okay. But in the end, everything still seemed to fall on me.

“This just in,” the TV anchor again broke in. “The National Weather Service is reporting that a tornado has been spotted over Interstate 24 near Murfreesboro.” Interstate 24? That was only 20 minutes away! I looked outside. It was hailing. “Cool!” shouted one of the boys. “Let’s go outside.”

“No, you’re not,” I said. “There’s a tornado.” I needed a plan. Fast. Some way to protect a houseful of kids. We needed to get away from windows. But where could we go? We didn’t have a basement. An interior room, then. Someplace safe from falling objects. The bathroom was the most central room in the house. And it had a closet. But for eight people? There was no other choice.

“Listen,” I said to the boys and Adrian. “If it gets worse, get in the bathroom.”

The boys ran excited­ly between the front and back doors, opening them to watch the hail. Then I heard one call to me, “Miss Kim, I think you better come look at this.” I ran to the back door. A massive black cloud with flashes of blue light filled the sky. Omigosh! I thought. It’s coming right at us!

“Run!” I screamed. We scrambled to the bathroom closet. Then stopped. “Is this where you meant?” one of the boys asked. I knew what he was thinking. It was maybe five feet long and two feet deep. Too small. But already we could feel the air pressure pushing against us. There wasn’t time to go anywhere else. James went in first. Then the other boys piled in, lying on top of each other. I lifted Adrian and handed her to James.

“We’ll be okay,” I said, trying to hold back my rising fear. “James, whatever happens, don’t let go of Adrian.” I squeezed in last, my body bent like a pretzel, crouching over the kids’ bodies. Somehow we managed to shut the doors. It seemed like there wasn’t enough oxygen. We could hear rumbling outside getting louder, the air pressure literally squeezing us, as if the walls of the closet would crumble at any minute. Someone—more than one person—was crying. I could feel myself panicking. This closet was so rickety. I needed to do something. But what?

“Mom?” I heard James say in the darkness.

“Yes, dear,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

“I think we should pray.”

“Everyone pray as loud as you can,” I said. “God needs to hear us over the tornado.” The tornado roared. The closet shook. But I could still hear the sound of voices praying, mine joining in.

“Dear God, please protect us. Save us! Help me keep these children safe!” It felt like we prayed for hours.

“Miss Kim, something’s hitting me.” The top of the closet was falling in. The light fixture came loose and hit a boy in the head. Gray sky appeared above. We had to get out. The door wouldn’t open. The boys pounded on the sides of the closet, punching out a hole. I peered through the opening in the closet wall.

It was hard to get my bearings. It looked like a war zone. Could the tornado have carried us into someone else’s yard? I crawled through the hole and stepped over the inside wall of a house, then scrambled across a huge slab of siding. Part of a roof lay nearby. Where was my house? I took a few steps backward. Then it hit me. I was standing where my living room used to be. My house was gone! The bathroom closet was the only thing left standing. A flood of panic rushed over me. The kids! I started counting. Five…six…seven. They were all there! Safe! I threw my arms around them. We held each other in a massive bear hug. I didn’t want to let go of them.

I looked around the neighborhood. A house diagonal to mine was gone. Next door the roof was missing. Only half of my other neighbor’s house was standing. Then I knew once and for all, as certainly as I knew anything amidst this massive devastation, God had been there with us. That he was still with us. He must have had his arms wrapped tight around that closet! I led everyone to the house across the street. The neighbors weren’t home, but the tornado had torn the door off the garage. We went in to collect ourselves, glad to be somewhere with a roof.

The boys tried calling their parents on their cell phones, trying repeatedly before an occasional signal got through. The same scene played out over and over. “Mom, I’m telling the truth,” they’d say. “We were in a closet. Yes, a closet. It’s still there. But everything else is gone. Yes, Mom. I’m fine.”

Cars couldn’t get in our neighborhood. We walked to the closest boy’s house. Everywhere there was destruction, but I had this sense of wonder. We were alive and safe. All of us. Like a shield had been around us. The boy’s mom held him. Then she and I hugged. “You saved his life,” she kept saying.

“Not me,” I said. “God.”

With each reunion we hugged, cried, recounted every detail from the storm. “We have some clothes and furniture you can have,” one couple said. “You need to come over for dinner,” another said.

I spent the night at my sister’s. James stayed with one of the boys. Leslee stayed with her friend. The next day all of the boys’ families gathered at the ruins of my house. Anything that had ever mattered to me was gone. It was heartbreaking. But it was a pain I wasn’t facing alone. Nearly 20 people sorted through the rubble with me, doing whatever they could.

In the weeks that followed, my newfound friends welcomed me into their lives. Through them I met even more people. I lost everything I owned, yet I’d gained something none of life’s storms could take away: a community of friends and the absolute assurance that even in our darkest hour we’re never alone.

I sat in my dining room, the big table piled with paperwork: hospital forms, insurance claims, coverage statements.

All a medical and legal paper trail for my 20-year-old son Danny, leading back to that day when everything about his life and mine changed forever.

One minute he was joyriding with some friends out on a twisty country road. The next, a quadriplegic and brain-damaged, almost every trace of the strong-willed, energetic, even exasperating boy I loved gone. Or almost.

Danny had been out of the hospital a while now. He used a special wheelchair sized for his six-foot-two frame. Our house bustled with caregivers; a nurse’s aide, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, a physical therapist, all seemingly trying to resurrect as much of the old Danny as still might exist inside his broken brain and body.

In fact, it was those caregivers who had me going through all that paperwork that afternoon. They had started saying ominous things. Danny, six weeks shy of his eighteenth birthday the day of the accident, was an adult now, off our insurance and covered by Medicaid.

“We’ll have to discontinue our visits if your son doesn’t show more signs of improvement,” the therapists told me. “Insurance just won’t cover it anymore.”

I told them that I would figure something out, like I’d been doing all my life. Lead, follow or get out of the way—that’s what my husband, Denny, said my motto could be.

I’d had a chaotic childhood—alcoholic parents—and I’d basically raised my­self. Who else could I count on to keep everything under control? Denny complained that he couldn’t do a single chore without me following behind him to do it all over again. Well, I liked the beds made a certain way. Given Danny’s condition, wasn’t it obvious that we needed more order and structure around this house?

Now I needed a solution. I’d kept things going so far by quitting my job to coordinate Danny’s team of caregivers. What would we do without them? More than that, what did they mean, “If your son doesn’t show more signs of improvement”? Were they saying that Danny would never improve? I didn’t want to believe that. All of our efforts couldn’t be for nothing. Surely we could bring him back a little. Surely life wouldn’t go on like this forever.

I concentrated harder on the papers. So little money! So many expenses! Denny pastored a small church and worked full-time for the telephone company. No way could we afford to pay caregivers out of our own pocket. I tried to beat back the despair that began to envelop me, beat it back like I had since I was a kid.

The phone rang.

“Ricki?”

It was Missy, the occupational therapist. Actually, she was more than a therapist. She was my friend, my rock in all the fear and uncertainty of caring for Danny. She’d even started attending our church. I felt that she was destined to be a part of our lives. When she spoke, though, her voice sounded apprehensive.

“Ricki, I have some bad news. The home-health people talked to us today. They told us that they’re not going to pay for any more visits with Danny. They can’t justify it. They say that Danny has reached a plateau.”

Silence on the line. “Ricki?”

I said something, kept her on the phone long enough to get a few more details and thank her. Then I hung up.

Somewhere, from the living room, a television hummed. Danny was in there with his grandmother, Denny’s mom. I thought back over the long, tiring day. Up at seven. Raise the electric bed. Feed Danny through a tube in his stomach. Transfer him to a shower chair and bathe him. Shave and dress him. Wheel him to the porch for speech therapy. More feeding. Recline his wheelchair for rest. Transfer him to the physical therapy equipment. Back to the wheelchair to watch TV.

In an hour or so he would sit with us at dinner. Then we’d transfer him to bed, get him positioned and say goodnight, until we awoke in shifts to give him medication through the night.

Plateau. Such a pretty word for such an unhappy thing, one identical day after another stretching as far as the eye could see.

I stared at the paperwork, trying to focus, trying to keep down something black and suffocating inside me. A solution, a solution. I needed a solution. The panic rose higher.

Pray, Ricki. The day of the accident, a trauma doctor had told us that Danny’s head injury was so severe that he wouldn’t live 24 hours. Denny and I had prayed in the intensive care unit, reaching through a tangle of tubes and wires to place our hands directly over our son’s motionless body. Just save his life, we’d pleaded. That’s all we ask. The vital signs on the monitors had changed almost instantly.

Why wasn’t God answering my prayers now?

Denny came in, home from work. “What’s wrong?” he asked instantly.

Was it that obvious? “Missy called—” I didn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t. I sobbed on our great big dining room table, a converted pool table actually, from back in the days when the kids always seemed to have their friends over, before the accident.

I felt Denny’s arm around my shoulders. I sobbed, sobs that seemed to come from my toes. Finally I lifted my head, wondering what kind of mess my face looked. I told Denny what Missy had said. “Oh, Lord, what are we going to do?” I cried.

Denny held me. Like a good pastor, he knew when to let silence do its work. When he finally spoke I was calmer and able to hear. “Ricki,” he said, “I know it doesn’t sound good. But maybe it’s not as bad as it seems. Missy’s not giving up on Danny. No one’s giving up on him. It’s just how the system works. At least they’ve been here long enough to teach us how to do everything. Let’s try not to panic. God’s gotten us this far. I know he’ll get us to whatever we need to do next.”

I sat up, wiping my eyes and trying to let Denny’s words sink in. God’s gotten us this far. How far? I couldn’t help wondering. Not far enough! Not as far as we needed. Not as far as I needed. I was the one who’d be home with Danny all day. I was the one who’d need to keep it all together, keep everything under control.

I stopped and looked into Denny’s eyes. He regarded me calmly, like he always did, almost like he knew the storms my heart generated and knew just as well how to outlast them. Control. What exactly did that mean? What had I spent this past hour—no, my whole life—obsessing over?

I thought back to all of the years I’d tried to shape and direct Danny. From wailing infant to mischievous youngster to rebellious teen, he had made his own way anyway.

What about his recovery? Had all my management of the paperwork and the caregivers changed any of the medical facts? Goodness, I hadn’t even been able to make a dent in the way my husband tucked in the sheets. Instead, all I had succeeded in doing was hurting his feelings.

Who was next on my list to take charge of? God? Dear God, from now on you’ll be taking your orders from me. Love, Ricki. It sounded so ridiculous that I almost laughed out loud.

And yet how true. What I really dreaded was God taking control of me. It was one thing to believe in God—and I had, with my whole heart. It was another thing to surrender to him, to give up everything—my will, even my own son—to his total care.

What might he do? Anything! He might tell me to stop staring at medical forms because Danny’s healing had gone as far as it ever would. He might remind me that I had prayed—that in fact I had already surrendered at Danny’s hospital bedside when I begged for my son’s life, no matter what.

Danny, broken, helpless Danny, was an answer to prayer. A miracle I didn’t understand yet. And just maybe God would show me reserves of strength and courage I never knew I had.

I felt something inside me release, change, like the end of struggle and the beginning of acceptance. A picture came to mind of someone drowning, thrashing so hard that the lifeguard couldn’t get a hold to pull them from the water. I stopped thrashing. I threw my arms around Denny’s neck and held him tight.

A few minutes later we went into the living room. There was Danny, his face so sweet and soft, staring at the television. We sat with him for a while, letting the afternoon change itself to evening. Finally, I got up to fix dinner. Soon it would be time to get Danny ready for bed. We would transfer him and prop him up with pillows. We’d read some Scripture, pray, put on a little music and wish him goodnight. One evening, like so many others.

Today, 21 years later, I marvel at how many such evenings we’ve had. Not long ago someone asked, “Do you ever laugh?” I wanted to say, “Come to my house!” There, anyone can see those blessings God so improbably promised.

Like Missy, who remains a dear friend and a faithful member of our church. Or Connie, another friend we were able to hire as a part-time nurse’s aide, with the help of a government program.

Or our Friday movie nights, when Danny’s older siblings, Christy and Chip, now both married with kids themselves, come over and everyone piles on the living room floor, snuggling up with Danny in the middle to watch a video. I think they’ve stayed nearby in part because of Danny.

He’s kept us close. Taught us how to love. And taught me that sometimes the most transforming change of all is surrender.

The Western Wall was even more breathtaking than it looked in photographs. The morning sun glistened off the towering limestone blocks while visitors of all ages and cultures, even soldiers in uniform, stood in prayer. My best friend, Ruth, and I hurried to the area where the women gathered, excited to pray at the foot of the Temple Mount, where our Jewish ancestors had felt closest to God.

In a little room to the right, hundreds of prayer books of different colors, sizes and languages were stacked. I grabbed one with Hebrew and English and stood next to Ruth, who’d brought her own from home, a siddur with a worn brown cover that had belonged to her mother, Sarah.

Tufts of greenery sprouted from cracks in the mammoth stones, along with folded notes containing prayers. I left a note myself, asking God to help me find my beshert—my soul mate. Ruth placed her own note in the Wall and bowed her head, her eyes closed, deep in devotion.

READ MORE: MY PRAYER AT THE WAILING WALL

“What did you pray for?” I asked when she was finished. Ruth wouldn’t say. That was unlike her, but I respected her privacy.

“I feel so at peace here,” she said.

Something had been on Ruth’s mind, that I knew. We’d been best friends since the third grade, and there was little we could hide from each other.

There weren’t many Jews where we were from in Iowa—and with names like Ruth Siegel and Eve Smalheiser we stood out. We had quickly bonded over our shared faith and family traditions, Shabbat dinners and our Bat Mitzvah lessons. We talked often of visiting Jerusalem one day.

“We’ll pray together at the Western Wall,” Ruth promised me when we were kids. “You’ll see.” Now we were both 20 years old, having come to Jerusalem sooner than we had dreamed.

We spent the rest of the day visiting the holy sites of Jerusalem, places we had read and dreamed about for years. But back at our hotel, Ruth flew into a panic. She tore through her bag, opened the drawers, dropped to the floor to look under the bed. “My prayer book!” she said. “It’s gone!”

“Let’s check again,” I said. “It must be somewhere.” We frantically looked around our room, until we ran out of places to look.

“Maybe I left it on one of the buses we took,” Ruth said.

We called the bus company, but no one had seen it. Ruth made her peace with the loss. “Maybe my book’s gone to someone who needs it more than I do,” she said.

READ MORE: THE PRAYER BOOK

I had to give her credit; she handled it with more grace than I would have. That was Ruth, though. Always one to focus on the blessings she had, not on the things she lost. We left Jerusalem with beautiful memories, hoping to come back someday.

I thought that my return trip would be with Ruth. Maybe with our future husbands, if my prayers were answered. Perhaps we’d both even make aliyah, or emigrate to Israel permanently.

I never thought that a year after our time in Jerusalem, I’d lose my best friend to cancer. I had no idea that Ruth was sick until the end, but she’d been fighting it for a while. Now I understood what she had prayed about so solemnly at the Western Wall.

I returned to Jerusalem alone. Still in mourning, approaching the first anniversary of her death. I did the only thing that I felt would help me with my grief—I returned to the Wall, the place where Ruth and I had felt such peace.

Those weathered limestone blocks were as I remembered them, gleaming in the hot sun, their cracks filled with paper prayers. I approached the Wall and asked God to help me through my friend’s death. But all I felt was sorrow. Without Ruth it just wasn’t the same.

I ducked into the little room to the right of the women’s prayer area. I combed through the stacks of prayer books, looking for one written in both English and Hebrew. My hand brushed across one with a brown cover, its faded title in English. I pulled it out and returned to the Wall outside, my heart heavy with my thoughts of Ruth, the memory of her praying beside me. And I flipped open the book.

In that moment, joy and gratitude replaced my grief. I didn’t feel alone.

Written inside the worn cover were two names. Names of people I knew. Sarah Goodman Siegel and her daughter, my best friend, Ruth. Of all the books I could have chosen, I had found Ruth’s siddur. Or had it found me?

Life is made up of moments that lodge in our minds like scenes from a movie. Strung together, they tell a story of where we’ve come from, who we are, what we want to be.

It’s no fluke that when we play back the video of our lives, the scenes we remember most vividly are those when our story overlaps with anoth­er’s–however briefly. These shared scenes change each of us in power­ful ways. For better or worse.