Shock and Horror

Dennis called me yesterday just after I got home from school with the kids.

“Are you watching TV?” he asked.

“No, what’s happened?”

“A massive tornado just hit Oklahoma City. It’s horrible. Absolutely horrible.”

I turned on the television and watched in shocked silence as a helicopter camera panned across what looked like a war zone. Meteorologists were calling it the largest tornado in the history of the world.

The coverage kept returning to Plaza Towers Elementary School, which had been completely destroyed by the twister. At the local affiliate in Oklahoma City, anchors continually asked parents to call in and let them know whether or not students were still inside  building when the storm hit. Within minutes, one of the anchors had an update.

“We have had word from a parent that the students were inside the building on lockdown.”

I burst into tears.

This scenario has always been one of my worst nightmares. I live in Tennessee’s “Tornado Alley” and my kids have been on severe weather lockdown countless times over the last ten years. During one especially close call, I drove to pick up my children after severe weather rolled through and had to take alternate roads and drive around countless downed power lines and trees just to get to them, three miles away. I didn’t have any information on whether it was a tornado that had caused all the damage and I didn’t know how the elementary school and the preschool across the street had fared. As I drove, my heart was in my throat– But I reasoned with myself that they were safer at school than they would be at home during a storm. We don’t have a basement- just an interior bathroom. Their school, on the other hand, is a massive structure of cinder block and steel.

Just like Plaza Towers Elementary School.

I cried as I watched people run toward the school and start flinging aside debris. I cried hearing the first reporter get to the scene and begin crying himself as he tried to describe the panicked crowd of the parents and teachers and rescue workers around him. I cried hearing about parents who were hysterical, wondering why they were being held back from searching through the leveled school themselves. I would have been the same way. I would have fought tooth and nail to get to my children, to dig them out with my own hands.

The agony of that moment was unbearable.

My children and I said a prayer together as the rescue workers searched for the children in that building. We prayed that God would be with the ones trapped inside, and that He would comfort and calm them. We prayed that the rescue workers would get to them quickly. We prayed that no one was in pain. We prayed for the parents.

Today, my heart is broken for those who didn’t feel their child’s arms around their neck by the end of  yesterday. I can’t possibly know the full extent of their pain, but I did feel a small piece of it as I watched, sobbing with them, and all the fears I’ve had about my own children being away from me during a tornado bubbled to the surface.

I continue to say prayers today for Oklahoma, and for all the families who lost loved ones in yesterday’s tornados. I have no adequate words, really, for how I feel right now. Nothing can make it right.

Images via Modern Event Preparedness/Flickr, The National Guard/Flickr