This is how I started my day yesterday.
On a boat.
With a cup of coffee.
Chilly. But enjoying the sun sparkles on the water as the boys fished. Well, one boy fished, the other snuggled me most of the time.
I ended the day in the front seat of a pick-up, facing backward, legs curled under me, holding onto my screaming son’s hand as a tornado went over the top of us. Or at least the side of it did.
We had been listening to the warnings on the radio. Knowing that storm system was moving north of where we were heading. Watching carefully.
Until we looked out the window to see a tornado on the ground next to us and our phones all exploding with emergent messages to seek cover immediately. What cover!!!? There was absolutely no time to seek any cover from anything as it came out of nowhere. Literally. The only thing we could do was pull over and hold on.
It was loud. It rocked us. I didn’t want to be staring out of a window that could be shattered at any time, so I just glanced at what was happening around me. Wind and rain like I’ve never seen. After the initial hit we were able to pull forward under a viaduct for the next hour. We were covered enough not to have damage but the cars in front and behind us were losing windows from the softball sized hail being thrown by the 100mph winds. We watched people run down delineator posts all around us, just to get off the road, but unaware of what was around them. It was the most pandemonium during a storm I had ever seen, because there was no place to go.
My little boy has been afraid of two things in his life…his whole life.
Spiders
And tornados.
Yesterday for him was probably his worst nightmare.
And when we got back, he came to me and said “mom…..can you believe that really just happened? It feels kind of unreal.” And this was after we had taken turns being sick in the bathroom. Apparently we handle post stress the same way.
Nope, I can’t believe I just survived a tornado in a truck.
And then he said… “I guess God didn’t want us to die today.”
Nope, He didn’t.
There’s still too many mornings with coffee and sun sparkles on the water I need to see.