Years ago, when Julia and Nate were small we lived in Denton, just 15 minutes away from where we live now. One Valentine’s Day, Brian had given me the gift of sleep. (If you know me, you know that is my love language, my diamond ring, and my spa day all wrapped up in one).

That morning, Brian threw open the curtains and I was so annoyed, until I realized what he was saying – it was snowing. It would be Julia and Nate’s first snow and it was magical.

This year, around Valentine’s Day, when the news called for a Winter Storm, I told everyone Riley, Mary Alice, and Sebastian the story from years ago. They were so excited to see snow and we dug out the hats and scarves.

What started as a little snow storm turned into ‘Winter Storm Uri’. It became a strange week of power outages and isolation. We quickly learned that each neighborhood across Texas was facing different challenges depending on their power situation.

Our power would stay on for about one hour, then it would be off anywhere from 3 hours to 12 hours. With temperatures in the single digits, our home reach 42 inside at the coldest point. We joked that it was like the movie Mary Poppins – when the colonel would fire the cannon at a certain time and the mom would yell ‘places everyone’. I would yell ‘it’s on!’. Julia would start a meal, Mary Alice would start the fireplace, and everyone would scurry around hoping to make the most of the power we had.

The roads were impassable for a few days and we made random dinners of the food we had been ignoring because it wasn’t our preference. (It is time like these the luxury of having food that we can pass over smacks me in the face.)

Our fire alarm system reset each time the power turned off and on, which lead to blaring alarms for 20 minutes. I think this was the hardest part on my nerves. The noise scared the kids every time and in the middle of the night, when you are cold and just wishing for rest, this was my undoing.

I called my parents for advice and they calmly reminded me to just do one thing at a time. Try the breaker, batteries, unplug everything, and ask neighbors if they were having similar problems.

Isn’t that the case? When you are in the middle of chaos, being calm and thinking clearly is the hardest part. Thank goodness for relationships. They remind us we are not alone, that asking for help is usually the smartest thing we can ever do, and that we need one another.

The week passed eventually and we put another check mark in our box of making it through something together.