Thankful

I am so thankful that my kids are safe. They live in Franklin and there is severe flooding all around them. Nearby neighborhoods were evacuated. But they are on a slight elevation and made it through the night without even losing their power. However, they have lost it this morning and are on their way to our house.

I can't even imagine having to evacuate your home with a newborn, a three-year-old and a four-year-old. My daughter-in-law had Pax by c-section on Monday. Danny said he and a neighbor tried to go to a nearby street to move some furniture upstairs for a friend who is out of town and couldn't do it because they would have had to wade through chest-high water. So you can imagine how thankful this mom/grandma is to hear they are fine this morning.

John and I drove to Franklin yesterday to drop off some food I had made for the kids. We were going to visit a while and then head over to Leipers Fork for a guitar event. We had no idea how bad it was already getting in Leipers Fork when we left Danny and Rebecca's around 1:30. But as we drove through the area, many of the roads were flooding and we saw several emergency vehicles. The rain was coming down hard and we began to think that if we didn't get out of there, we might be stuck there all night. There was just nowhere for the water to go and I knew the rain wasn't supposed to stop any time soon. We passed on the guitar show and just headed back to Murfreesboro. When we got home and turned on the local news, it was obvious that we had a very brief window (briefer than we kenw) and if we hadn't made the decision to leave when we did, we may not have been able to get out of Leipers Fork.

We ate an early dinner at Parthenon Grille and had planned to go to the 7:00 service at church. But John splashed salad dressing on his shirt and pants. So we had to go home for him to change clothes. And on the way home we decided just to stay in for the rest of the night.

I thought I would post on my blog that the kids are fine because so many of my friends know they live in Franklin. Also, for friends and family out of state who may be checking to see if we're okay. I just spoke to my sister-in-law, Cheryl, and she said the water had gotten so high there that they couldn't see the grass in their yards. Chris was over at Todd's helping to move all of their equipment because the basement was flooding.

I spent the first thirty-three years of my life in Southern California and experienced many earthquakes. But the "storm events" I have witnessed in Tennessee are scarier to me than earthquakes. Last April I saw homes destroyed by tornadoes very close to my own neighborhood. I even went inside one, helping someone from our church pack up what was left of their belongings because their house was uninhabitable. The flooding from yesterday's storms was like nothing I have ever seen. Our neighborhood is fine, but the Interstate (24) we travel to go anywhere became a lake yesterday and cars were totally submerged. I drive that Interstate all the time. It's surreal to know that in neighboring communities people are in shelters and their homes are under water; yet I am safe, dry and warm.

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