aribell
formerly nicola.kirwan
...in St. Louis on Friday. It's a long story, but here goes:
So, St. Louis regularly has insane thunderstorms, not usually this early in the season, but still pretty intense. I don't pay much attention anymore since it's just expected and generally there's not any serious damage. So I was going about my business and finishing up stuff at school on Friday when things looked bad and I overheard some conversations about it, but again, being from here, I didn't pay much mind.
My dad was in town and I went over to visit him. He needed to run some errands and I tagged along. I'll admit that the following sounds really foolish, but neither of us were thinking about it--when we left the house the sky looked super ominous and there were warning sirens going off. We didn't pay any attention to them, though. Why, I can't even say, except that we just weren't thinking about it and they're always saying things are worse than they actually are.
So, we go to Target and couldn't have been in the store more than 10 minutes before we heard a downpour on the roof and the electricity started flickering. Some people in the store started getting anxious, and the store clerks started telling everyone to go to the back of the store. I had been separated from my dad and he was at the front of the store. When the clerks told me to stay in the back of the store, I told them I had to go find my father and they wouldn't let me. But I knew he wasn't going to stay corraled in the back of the store with a bunch of strangers and I had to argue with the clerks and the security guard to let me go to the front to meet back up with him. I should say that at this point they did not actually tell us that a tornado was coming through. All we heard was rain and they said there was a bad storm outside. When I got back with my dad at the front of the store he was arguing with another clerk to let us out of the store. It was clearly raining hard outside, but again, they didn't say "There's a tornado!" They seemed to be mainly concerned with making sure that no one started stealing things. So they let us out and locked the doors.
(by the way, I didn't think it was necessarily smart to leave the store, but I was with my dad and men are so sensitive about you giving them any indication that you don't think that they can handle the situation. Just like I knew he wouldn't stay in the store, I knew he'd take it personally if I suggested we should stay.)
We leave and are driving in the wind and downpour, and all the electricity on the streets and in the stores has gone out. We drive back to the highway that we took to get there, and can see that everyone is being directed off of the highway. It was dark and rainy and I could faintly make out trees that looked like they had been struck by lightening. Then I saw a power line that fell across the length of the highway. And directly in front of us, the police had blocked the road to keep us from going forward (we later learned that a tractor trailer had been turned and stood on its end). So we turn around and head toward another highway in the direction of the Target. Right before we got on the second highway, I had a bad feeling about it, and not half a mile down the highway, traffic completely stops. We ended up sitting on the highway for 3 and a half hours. People were walking around the lanes, a kid was selling candy bars, no one was moving at all. There were downed power lines that fell on this highway too. It wasn't until we turned on the radio that we learned that a tornado had come right through where we were, but it being night we still couldn't see anything. It's funny, though, I my dad and I had had a disagreement and I prayed before meeting him that we would be able to reconcile. Well, the combination of that adventure and talking for 3 hours on the highway definitely accomplished that. It wasn't exactly how I envisioned the prayer being answered, but it was answered.
So the next morning I went and drove back along the highways and roads my dad and I took to get to the store and saw houses collapsed, warehouses with an entire side wall ripped off, buildings destroyed, and lots of broken and burnt trees. The crazy thing about it was that the tornado (or at least one of them) had taken exactly the path that my dad and I had driven. And it came through during that short amount of time that we were in the store. It was one of those things where had we left five minutes earlier we would have been outside and likely swept up by the tornado. I was reminded of Psalm 91.
My lesson: God is faithful, listen to tornado sirens, and it's necessary to find sensitive and indirect ways of letting men know when they are being reckless.
So, St. Louis regularly has insane thunderstorms, not usually this early in the season, but still pretty intense. I don't pay much attention anymore since it's just expected and generally there's not any serious damage. So I was going about my business and finishing up stuff at school on Friday when things looked bad and I overheard some conversations about it, but again, being from here, I didn't pay much mind.
My dad was in town and I went over to visit him. He needed to run some errands and I tagged along. I'll admit that the following sounds really foolish, but neither of us were thinking about it--when we left the house the sky looked super ominous and there were warning sirens going off. We didn't pay any attention to them, though. Why, I can't even say, except that we just weren't thinking about it and they're always saying things are worse than they actually are.
So, we go to Target and couldn't have been in the store more than 10 minutes before we heard a downpour on the roof and the electricity started flickering. Some people in the store started getting anxious, and the store clerks started telling everyone to go to the back of the store. I had been separated from my dad and he was at the front of the store. When the clerks told me to stay in the back of the store, I told them I had to go find my father and they wouldn't let me. But I knew he wasn't going to stay corraled in the back of the store with a bunch of strangers and I had to argue with the clerks and the security guard to let me go to the front to meet back up with him. I should say that at this point they did not actually tell us that a tornado was coming through. All we heard was rain and they said there was a bad storm outside. When I got back with my dad at the front of the store he was arguing with another clerk to let us out of the store. It was clearly raining hard outside, but again, they didn't say "There's a tornado!" They seemed to be mainly concerned with making sure that no one started stealing things. So they let us out and locked the doors.
(by the way, I didn't think it was necessarily smart to leave the store, but I was with my dad and men are so sensitive about you giving them any indication that you don't think that they can handle the situation. Just like I knew he wouldn't stay in the store, I knew he'd take it personally if I suggested we should stay.)
We leave and are driving in the wind and downpour, and all the electricity on the streets and in the stores has gone out. We drive back to the highway that we took to get there, and can see that everyone is being directed off of the highway. It was dark and rainy and I could faintly make out trees that looked like they had been struck by lightening. Then I saw a power line that fell across the length of the highway. And directly in front of us, the police had blocked the road to keep us from going forward (we later learned that a tractor trailer had been turned and stood on its end). So we turn around and head toward another highway in the direction of the Target. Right before we got on the second highway, I had a bad feeling about it, and not half a mile down the highway, traffic completely stops. We ended up sitting on the highway for 3 and a half hours. People were walking around the lanes, a kid was selling candy bars, no one was moving at all. There were downed power lines that fell on this highway too. It wasn't until we turned on the radio that we learned that a tornado had come right through where we were, but it being night we still couldn't see anything. It's funny, though, I my dad and I had had a disagreement and I prayed before meeting him that we would be able to reconcile. Well, the combination of that adventure and talking for 3 hours on the highway definitely accomplished that. It wasn't exactly how I envisioned the prayer being answered, but it was answered.
So the next morning I went and drove back along the highways and roads my dad and I took to get to the store and saw houses collapsed, warehouses with an entire side wall ripped off, buildings destroyed, and lots of broken and burnt trees. The crazy thing about it was that the tornado (or at least one of them) had taken exactly the path that my dad and I had driven. And it came through during that short amount of time that we were in the store. It was one of those things where had we left five minutes earlier we would have been outside and likely swept up by the tornado. I was reminded of Psalm 91.
My lesson: God is faithful, listen to tornado sirens, and it's necessary to find sensitive and indirect ways of letting men know when they are being reckless.
Psalm 91:9-16 said:
.
