April 27th, 2011

The past 72 hours or so have been quite exciting. Normally when I say that anything is exciting, I mean it in a good way but today I mean it very differently. When we woke up on Wednesday morning, April 27, there was nothing particularly exciting going on. I had gotten up early to let the cat out and decided to stay up and have my morning coffee in peace.  I worked steadily on some pictures for about an hour before getting Cate off to school and Seth off to work. My good friend Vickie was also there that morning. Typically Vickie stays with us on Monday’s nights, but this week we moved our visiting night to Tuesday. At around 8:15-ish, Vickie was about to leave for work, the boys were on the couch watching television, and I was about to upload all the pictures that I had been working on that morning. The rain started to fall and while we were expecting a thunderstorm and even the loss of power, none of us were in anyway prepared for what was about to happen. It only took about 1 minute for everything to be over and the reality of what had just happened to really set it. We had just been through a tornado.  Looking out the kitchen window we saw the devastation of what a tornado is capable of and while we were safe from harm, I was still scared. I was almost afraid to go outside to see the extent of the damage.

It was quiet, almost like the yard itself was in shock over what had just occurred. Barely a breath of wind, no traffic on the highway, no drills and air compressors sounding from the lawnmower shop next door. Just the soft fall of rain.After talking with Seth, he decided to come home from work although there was no structural damage to our house or buildings. It was comforting to me to know that he was on his way to be with us. I was rattled and quite honestly still afraid that one of the limbs or tree’s might have been weakened by the storm and was just waiting for a nice gust of wind to send it crashing onto our house. But none of them did and after about 45 minutes, the sun came out. The dead silence gave way to the hum of chainsaws and the wailing of sirens.

While the shock of the morning tornado was still very much running my emotions, I knew that we only had a brief window to get things in order and make a plan because the storms coming in that evening were going to be far worse.  After sending the kids to the boss’ parents house, I did some cleaning and packed our bags to spend the night with my mom and daddy in Cedartown. The boss didn’t argue with my plan at all but opted to stay in Cave Spring with the house.  It was a difficult decision to separate our family but I needed to know that the kids would be safe and the boss needed to know that the house was safe as well as me and the kids.  The night storms proved to be far more devastating to the surrounding area than to our town. Just a few miles down the road, a large tornado ripped across the highway, obliterating chicken houses and residental homes and snapping tree's in half like they were toothpicks. 

Through it all, however, God protected our family and our house from harm. It's been a very humbling 72 hours if nothing else. It was hard to complain about not having power because we still had a home, something that not everyone in our community still had. Some of the families in our area have suffered major losses. Our small community has been brought very close together by this tragedy and we are so thankful for our wonderful neighbors and friends in town. After a terrifying day and night on Wednesday, everyone is now working to get our town and homes back in order. With power restored to most of the town now, we can begin the process of cleaning up and moving on.

 Please keep our community and the other area's affected and devastated by this weeks storms across the south in your prayers.