Life after 4.27.11

My readers and those that know me in real life know that I am a weather geek. I can sit there and talk shop about hook echoes, wall clouds, supercell thunderstorms, the super outbreak, and rain wrapped tornadoes for hours and hours. I've read a million books on tornadoes - most recently on vacation in september. Nothing, I repeat, nothing, prepared me for what occurred on April 27th. If you've ever hung out with me when there is bad weather approaching, I admittedly get a little giddy. Okay, a lot giddy. I love analyzing it and googling the terms that the meteorologist throws out and looking at the sky. Not much was different on April 27th. I was working. I had scrubbed in on a couple of c-sections and was sippin' on a diet coke, enjoying an impromptu visit from my friend Shari from the big house. Main Hospital...not the slammer. Just to be clear. After Shari left, my other buddy Kayse and I caught buzz that there were some bad storms coming. We found an empty room and went to check it out. As an aside, Kayse gets just about as giddy as I do, so there are two potential storm chasers happily watching the coverage. This goes on and off for hours. Of course, being at work, we had to actually work a little...then one of us would hear a rumor in the hallway of major storm action and we'd go check it out again. That's cool and fun and all...but then, something kinda changed. Don't laugh, I'm not trying to get all novella on you, but it's like the air was different. There was a sense of impending doom, dread, something like that. Power went out. Generator kicked in - a definite plus about working in a hospital - pagers started blowing up (not literally, for my older readers....but meaning that they were going off a lot) and overhead announcements saying "code black". That's serious stuff in my world. It's a threat - a major one, of a tornado or possibility of one, in our immediate area. Everyone gets serious and the patients are taken to a safe place. Yeah...we know you're crowned up, push a little harder, cause we gotta get safe, stat!!! So, I got my patient safe....we had no access to tv anymore and internet on the phone was pretty much impossible. Scary stuff. Praise God, we were spared, we got the all clear and moved our patients back to their rooms and life continued...albeit odd, it continued. Phones started ringing. Text messages started coming through. We began to catch wind (no pun intended) of tornadoes touching down near Athens, near Harvest, in Tuscaloosa. My friend Kristen (a fellow UA grad) texted me and said that 15th street was gone - her sister is a UA student that was safe. Again, wild rumors were coming out...but they were turning out to be true. A disaster was immediatly declared - which means no rest for the weary - ambulances are coming...from everywhere. Craziness. My buddy Beth and I made a quick, helpful jaunt through another unit and remembered why we didn't work in that particular unit....our hearts were breaking....might I mention that our stint was oh, about 5 minutes long. Eventually, we made it home. No power. No nothing. It was crazy dark, except for the lightning. We were unscathed. Beth had some issues getting home, her street had power lines down everywhere - and as of Wednesday, she was still powerless. Wednesday night, I huddled in bed by candlelight with my husband and my sweet girl and praised my God for keeping us safe, for sparing us.

So, I get up the next day and Jimmy is at work- he's a phone man. There's REALLY no rest for the weary with his job in an event like this. Phones don't work. Period. I attempted to try to call him 20 times on my cell that am. For real....it seems a little psychotic, huh, to see his name in my call list with a (20) out beside it. I can't get ANYONE! Texts are taking hours to go through. Hours. Finally, Jimmy says to pack up and go to his Mom's house bc she has power and it's gonna be a while before we get it. In my little mind, I think...cool, we'll go up there and get a hot meal, hot baths and the power will come on tonight. Mind you, I had no contact with the outside world. Neither did anyone else. So, me and W pile up and go to Mama Trish's. My first sign that things were really, really, really bad was that there was no music on the radio. It was all talk. People desperately trying to figure out where they were going to get gas, generators, food, batteries, baby formula, power for their nebulizers or oxygen tanks. Really dang bad. We get up to Mama Trish's and the tv station is full coverage - by pitiful little lights powered by generator and it's then that I see the first photos and video of the storms. The devestation. The numbers. The EF5s, the EF4s, the path, the width, the length, the loss. I became humbled. I became broken. I quickly turned to the internet - you tube is good for something - and watched video after video of the tragedy in Tuscaloosa - my college town - as it unfolded. I watched video of people huddling in Harvest while trying to get footage of the storm. Voices were shaking, there was a little cussin' going on. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't fathom the events. I didn't see my husband that night. He was working a lot. I wanted to hug him - the fragility of life was becoming so real. I was thankful to get to spend that evening with my extended family. I needed it.

For 5 days we stayed at Mama Trish & Papa's house with Christy, Shane, T, and Baby K. Jimmy was there on and off as he could be. I came home and got Dubya so he could live with us too. I missed my half marathon. The one that I had been training for seems like forever. Bummed doesn't even cover it. I continued to watch the footage, I bought t-shirts to go toward the relief efforts, we went to church without power and witnessed beautiful souls serving the community with food, just being together was enough. Again, so humbled, so blessed....and then I met my friend...

For numerous reasons, this is gonna be vague. I have met someone who has lost it all. I have met someone who has nothing to which to return. I have met someone who has some contents of her wallet and that is IT. I have met someone that despite this, is cheerful, is positive, and who knows that there has been a miracle in the midst of pain and suffering. I have met someone who knows that the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is real and loving. No - Matter - What. I have met someone who has broken me in places that I needed to be broken. I have met someone who has helped me to realize that stuff is just stuff. I have met someone that made this tragedy real.

I told you the beginning about my love for weather and my giddiness to come full circle. I will always find the phenomena interesting. It just is...the way it works, the mystery of it all. I will continue to buy books about it and read about it, simply bc I am a geek. But, I have been forever changed by realizing that this stuff takes people's lives away. People die. Tragically. In a heartbeat. Just because I don't know the names, I have seen faces. I have heard stories and put faces with stories. This is different to me. It's not a "oh, how sad" feeling and then I go on to the mall and go on with my life as usual. This is a nauseating feeling, it's a "what can I do?" feeling.

It's interesting that this comes at such a time where I have struggled with worldliness and living somewhere that I don't really wanna be. There isn't any discrimination, really. The tornadoes that came through didn't say, "okay...this family lives in a 5000 square foot house with granite countertops, so I'm gonna skip them. This family drives an old hooptie, so I'll get them. This lady is the vice president of the company, so I won't touch her." No. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, the people that made it, but that lost everything are all the same. Heck, the tornado ripped the clothing off of people anyway - you wouldn't know by looking at them if they had on J. Crew or Wal-Mart when the storm hit. In the end, they all have some things in common: their souls/salvation, their relationships, their friends/family. I guess what I have taken from all this is a reality check of how you never are guaranteed another day, when you do die - your worldly possessions & status gain you nothing. Your relationship with Christ is ultimately the be all and end all...serve Him, serve his people, and show Him to the world. It's really as simple as that.

One of the members of my small group posted this today, and I think it's beautiful:
"Live simply. Love completely. Thank God daily."

I am proud of my state and how everyone is coming together to help one another. You know I believe that Love is a verb - it is my prayer that God change my heart and make me want to serve more - to do more - to love more physically and without fear. I do thank God for keeping my friends and family safe on that scary day. I hope that these lessons aren't just for a season, but that we can all remember and make them a part of our lives, forever.

Yay for my readers! Hope y'all are all well - and if you have a need...lemme know! I'm itching to serve :)