Pray for TN

blog question: anyone know why it is cutting my words in half in the paragraph under the video? help?

If you've been watching the news at all, you know that Tennessee was hit by a massive string of storms this weekend. Well, what you don't know is that Aaron, Gabe, Claire, and I decided to take a little trip to Murfreesboro (southeast of Nashville) to the children's Discovery Center.

Now, the Discovery Center itself was AWESOME and if I would have had my camera (bad blogger alert... oops! I left it in Nashville after the Simpson wedding and haven't picked it up yet.) I would have taken a ton of pictures. They had a huge water table, fire truck and costumes, a mini aquarium, train tables, a bone health center, a craft center with finger painting, drawing, and chalk, a car you could learn how to put together and change tires, and a "tiny town" made up of Home Depot, a post office, a kitchen set, etc. Gabe was in heaven and Aaron and I had so much fun seeing him so happy. The center would be a great place for families because they had activities for all ages and it was reasonably priced.

Well, a half hour after we got there a tornado watch (the one where they've seen a tornado... watch? warning?) was issued and we had to take shelter. I was only mildly concerned because the center was built into the side of a hill so we were very safe. After it passed in Smryna (ten miles or so away) the storms came and didn't let up. We heard reports of it getting pretty bad but didn't think too much of it... until I overheard someone say I-24 (the interstate we take home) was closed. WHAT? Well, this is what happened only a few miles from where we were... and we were on the WRONG side of the Interstate (away from Nashville!)

Yes, that is a mobile home that was FLOATING DOWN THE INTERSTATE.

We wound up getting stranded in Murfreesboro and staying the night in a hotel. In the morning, we heard that I-24 had reopened. Even though the weather forcast was pretty ugly, we decided to see how far we could go. Aaron started Air Assault school today and needed to be back, if we could safely get to Clarksville. Well, we found a way around Bell Road and made it onto 24. We then took a bypass around Nashville since the city itself is pretty much under water. It was raining pretty hard and the bypass wound up closing. The police routed us into Opryland. Well, not an hour after waiting there trying to figure out what to do and where to go (the cop Aaron asked had no clue, he should have told us we could get back on via a different route but instead made it seem like we had no options... we wasted valuable time!) the river began to flood and Opryland evacuated. Let me make this clear, as we were trying to exit the parkinglot, the river was literally only feet away from us but we were protected by a small barrier. The parking lots flooded fast (last I saw was up to the wheel wells of the cars) and today I heard that the hotel there is under 10+ feet of water...

updated: here's a picture of the once-incredible hotel

We luckily made it onto the alternate road and started heading North. Not five minutes after we got on that road, it closed behind us. We went over many overpasses where the interstate was completely flooded and water was up to the tops of semis undereath us. It was pretty scary, and the worst part was when we almost became stranded. We had no road to go on except one and it was covered in water. My SUV made it through (let's not even talk about how I almost peed my pants from fear when we started to go through it) and we continued on. I'm sure it wasn't long before it became impassable. The last part of our adventure came when we thought we were 'in the clear' and realized that water was beginning to pour onto the road again.

We were so blessed and thankful to have arrived home safely yesterday. Clarksville is flooding still as the river crests but it is not as bad as Nashville, where even Vanderbilt's hospitals are in crisis mode. Please, please pray for TN and all those affected by the record setting (more than doubling the previous records) storms and rain. It is bad!

*photo via kelseywinns