Morgan is a student at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. On April 25th at 6:42pm I got this picture from Morgan saying that it was tornadoeing. I answered What? Are you somewhere safe? She types back, "I'm wearing ear plugs and my hard hat and glasses." I answered, "That's probably not good enough when it picks up your whole body or the building crashes on you."
She says, "It's stopping but the alarm won't stop going off. And then sends me this picture, and says, "Look it's sunny now."
At 12:48pm, she sends me this picture, and says, "There are trees everywhere!"
I am really terrified of tornados. I don't know why, but I have always been. I can remember as a child not being able to sleep all night if I heard that there was a tornado warning. Somewhere I heard that it sounds like a train approaching. I think that I hear that sound every time it storms.
Anyway, it's not over yet. At 1:17pm she sends me a text that says, "There is supposed to be a bigger one tonight."
On Wednesday, April 27th at 10:30am she sends me a text that says, "There is a tornado right now. I just got the UT alert." I tell her to get to a shelter. At 12:00 noon I send a text asking if the storm has hit yet, and she replies, "It hit north Knox but not campus." I say good, and it's over? She answers, "for a few hours." From 1:00pm on she was in shelter at the architecture building that is concrete. She, along with others, were in shelter in a bathroom that was in the center of the building. I was praying for her safety. At various times, she could call us, but only when she came out of the bathroom because the service was not good in that location. I was very frightened. Sometimes when we were on the phone, she'd have to say, "I've gotta go, I have to get back in the bathroom, it's really bad right now." The last time I spoke to her, I told her to send me a text as soon as she was allowed to go back to her room and the storm was over. Sleep was fit full all night, and when I awoke in the morning, there was no text. My heart sank. I immediately got on the computer and looked up the weather for the University. There was not major damage to the University so I felt that she was probably safe, but still worried. Then I began to see the damage and devastation in other areas of TN, AR, and AL. I cannot imagine the terror and the pain that those people are experiencing.
I called Jim and asked him to please call Morgan and make sure that she was OK. He called her and she was asleep, safe and sound. She had gotten to go back to her room at 1:00am in the morning. She didn't want to disturb me because she thought that I'd be asleep.
She won't understand, until she has children, what no text or phone call does to a mother's heart!
I praise God that she and her friends were safe. But, I also pray God's peace to the many, many people affected by the tornados.
