A recent break-in to our storage unit reminded me that value is relative. Although the unit holds almost every material thing my husband and I have accumulated over the years, apparently nothing in our unit was worth stealing.

Of course when I received the phone call that our unit was involved in a series of break-ins, I panicked. That’s everything we own. Replacing some of those things would be impossible. Still staying a state away with my parents made me feel even more helpless in the situation.

But when Josh went in to inventory the unit, he quickly found that nothing was missing. Sure, things had been shifted around and the foam airplane we meticulously constructed and painted had been broken in two, but all our belongings were mysteriously pre-
sent.

Josh reported that these storage unit bandits who apparently were too good for our stuff had gone through the trouble of breaking into our lockbox but also had left everything there intact.

Looking back, I’m not sure what they would have wanted with the journal excerpts and letters we keep in there. To us, they’re precious. To a stranger, they’re worthless.

After the panic subsided and I realized all of our belongings still were safely packed away, I couldn’t help but do my own little inventory. Sure, it probably would have been a pain to replace some of that furniture. And yes, military gear can get expensive. But the things we truly valued — the letters and excerpts in our lockbox, the shoeboxes full of letters we exchanged during basic training and deployment — even if they mean nothing to a stranger, they’re the only material things that would really matter to us in the grand scheme of things.

This Father’s Day, I hope we can all remember to place value where it belongs — not on the things we collect but on the moments with family that move us and change us, and on the people who have made our lives better. As a very proud daughter and as a wife to a wonderful man who is about to become a father, I’ve learned there’s nothing more valuable than the love we share.