Don't Mess With Her Cubs!

(Photo by Pam Spaulding, The Louisville Courier Journal 3/6)

There is nothing like the tenacious love of a mother. Not even Mother Nature can trump the protective love of a mother looking out for her cubs. Consider the story of mother and two-time tornado survivor, Stephanie Decker. Peter Smith of the Louisville Courier Journal writes:

Stephanie Decker, the Clark County mother who lost parts of both of her legs when she shielded her children Friday from the tornado debris that had been her house, said Tuesday she was determined “to take the hit and not my daughter or my son.” Decker described her extraordinary ordeal in vivid detail in a University Hospital press conference on Tuesday afternoon.

She had huddled with her two children in her family’s basement on Henryville-Otisco Road in an outlying area of Henryville during Friday’s massive tornado outbreak.

She was reluctant to call herself a hero, but her husband, Joe Decker, didn’t hesitate. Because of her, “I’ve got my kids,” he said. As if on cue, her son Dominic, 8, and daughter Reese, 5, entered the small conference room where their mother was meeting the press. Reese jumped into her father’s arms, and Dominic held on to his mother’s arm.

Sporting a white Harley Davidson cap, her legs covered with blankets, Stephanie Decker was in good spirits and joked with reporters about how quiet they were before the press conference formally began.

She described two tornadoes — or the same one doubling back — striking the home. As the first approached, she wrapped son Dominic, 8, and daughter Reese, 5, in a comforter.

“It was loud and it kept getting louder,” she said of the first tornado. The house began shaking, debris began caving in and she held her children tight to protect them, she said.

She said a large steel beam landed on her. “I didn’t know I was really hurt until it had stopped,” she said. She made sure both children were unhurt, then saw she had extensive leg injuries and was bleeding heavily; she put the beam back on her leg to staunch the bleeding.

Then a second tornado hit. The memory is “all slow-motion” she said, with bricks and other debris raining on her. After the tornado cleared, she assured her children that “I loved them and I was going to make it.”

Her son ran for help and a neighbor got Reese out of the debris but was unable to get Stephanie out, so they ran for more help.

What a sacrificial act! During Lent this mother's heroic act of self-sacrifice reminds us of another one made for all humanity long ago:

⁵ Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, ⁶ who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of aservant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. ⁹ Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)

May God help us to be as selfless!