The year was 1989, I was a first-year high school teacher/coach in Early, Texas. It was an exciting time, beginning my coaching career and parenting. My wife Jane’t gave birth to our first son Colt the same year.

One afternoon, while on the field during football practice, I saw my mother’s car pull into the school parking lot. Immediately I sensed something was wrong. I watched Jane’t get out of the car, I could tell she was distraught by her body language.

I sprinted towards her, knowing something bad had happened. I could feel my heart crawl into my throat the closer I got to her. I repeated to myself, “I can handle this God, I can handle this.” Not knowing what to expect.

When I reached Jane’t, she was struggling to speak. Bracing for the unthinkable I asked, “What is it?”

She gathered herself saying, “Our house caught on fire, It’s bad.”

Then I asked, “Where’s Colt?” She pointed to the back seat, where he was sleeping in his baby seat unharmed.

The moment I saw Colt, nothing else mattered. My family was safe. I did not care about the house or anything in it. The fire could claim what it wanted as long as my family is alive and well.

Seeing a haze of smoke from the back of the house, Jane’t initially thought her curling iron was touching something. Realizing that was not the case, she lifted our 3-month-old son from the bassinet and opened the closet door in the master bedroom to further investigate. Flames barreled out of the closet nearly knocking them to the ground. The entire room was consumed by fire within seconds. She ran from the house, a neighbor dialed 911, and watched our house go up in flames.

My third question to Jane’t was about my deer head. I had bagged a 14 – point whitetail buck earlier, and I just got the mount back from the taxidermist. I had hung it on the living room wall the night before much to her disapproval. She did not like the idea of a dead animal glaring at us while we were watching T.V.!

Somehow it survived! However, the smell of smoke smell lingered for years, and the trophy hangs on the wall in a barn, almost forgotten. Just another thing.

I asked that question to be funny, lighten the load of the situation, and it worked. All was good.

Even though our house just burned down, I felt grateful, thankful, and even victorious. I lost things in the fire that were unique, but so what? In the end, they were just things endowed with no life or spirit and unable to respond or react to love.

Here’s the deal though, I still want things.

The key for me is balance. I try not to allow my pursuit of lifeless objects interfere with the people who bring me life.

I love what the late/great motivational speaker Jim Rohn said about life. “Life is not a collection of things, it’s a collection of experiences. Fill your life up with experiences, not things. Happiness in not contained in what you get, it is contained in what you become.”

A new car is still just a car. A new boat is still just a boat. A new set of golf clubs are still just golf clubs. You can always get more on eBay. Things can be replaced, people cannot.

Time spent with people is always better than time spent with things.

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Todd Howey is a columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose articles appear on Fridays. Email comments to [email protected].