Too Close to Home

If you read the last post, you see that I was up late writing b/c of the impending storm that was giving me the willys. (please excuse all of the mispelled words in the last post, I proofread it and still missed them...it was late.) I finally went to bed. Laid there for a while giving God the glory for His power on earth and praying that He would either blow or take His finger and route the impending tornados around our house and keep us safe.

Around 3:10 am I woke to wind howling worse than I have ever heard, lightning striking all around our house and rain sounding like someone was pouring a huge water jug over our house. It was very loud. Then it stopped. It was real quiet and calm for a few minutes, then the wind and rain picked up again, although not as loud and that continued for a while. I came out to the living room and flipped on the tv to see what was going on. On the doppler radar, they had swirls drawn over right where we lived. So, I put two crib mattresses in the bathroom floor and moved Madelyn and Natalie in there to sleep. Put Hannah in bed with Aaron, so he could grab her easy and run if another one came. By that point, it seemed to be passing us on tv and moving down the road. About 20 min. after the winds woke me up we heard and saw the first responders speeding by, then the fire trucks a couple of minutes later, followed finally by the ambulances. Then the ambulances making their way back to the hospital.

They were announcing on tv that 20 people were in the ER at the tiny hospital I work at. We only have room for 37 people on the floor I work on (which is the only floor) and 7-8 in the ICU. Last week when I worked we were full.

At 5am, we started getting phone calls to see if we were ok, starting with our preacher's wife, she knew we were close to the storm. Between 5 and 7 I probably got about 10 phone calls checking on us. Work called to see if I could come in and help, but unfortunately I wasn't able to since Aaron had left for work. I was able to go in from 3-7 to help relieve some that had come in early to help.

The girls and I went to drive around the damage this morning and I took these pictures. Of course it always looks worse in person. The road where the family of 3 died was blocked so we didn't get to go down it and see the worst of the damage. The damage started probably 1/2-1 mile from our house, so it barely missed us. Sorry about the duplicate pictures.

3 families from our church were hit, I know 2 of them completely with their homes gone. One lady is still in the ICU at the hospital with a collapsed lung.

I am thankful that God heard my prayer that night and protected us.