CVSD: Day 33

At the beginning of March, middle Tennessee was hit by a series of terrifying tornadoes in the middle of the night. East Nashville, where my brother and Daniel's sister both live, was devastated. The storm rolled on to Cookeville (where we used to live) and many people lost everything. It was horrific, but thankfully our family members and their properties were okay.

Fast forward several weeks and our state was put under a quarantine lock down followed by a shelter-at-home order. It's been a hard month. But Tennesseans have stepped up and taken care of each other, even amidst the hardness of it all.

On Sunday we celebrated Easter. Holidays on your own are hard. Quarantine holidays are sad. Daniel and I both had migraines. Daniel's dad and his wife drove over to give the kids Easter presents. They stayed on our upper deck and we chatted with them from our porch for a little bit before it started raining.

Worshipping from the living room, via YouTube, is proving to be one of our least favorite aspects of quarantine. I have never felt more profoundly that "the church" is really the people. And I miss the people. I am so thankful to know that the grave is empty, but we miss celebrating that important part of history with our church family.

We were expecting bad weather Sunday night, and right around midnight things got bad. Daniel and I were watching Netflix. It was a loud fight scene, but the wind was howling so loudly that I made Daniel pause our show and flip over to catch the weather. My app on my phone just said severe weather. It sounded worse than that. I kept searching. Finally we found a news station saying "Tornado Warning" for south east Chattanooga. We are north of Chattanooga, but the wind was crazy loud.

By morning we would learn that the east side of the city was hit by an F-3 tornado. Whole neighborhoods are decimated. Live wires cover the ground in some areas. All of our friends are okay, but many are out of power and there is a lot of damage to contend with. Because of the coronavirus, we are told that the best way to help is to stay home and let the first responders do their work. Even though we are fine, there is an emotional component of this that makes this feel extra hard. Hopefully there will be ways that we can help in the days to come. In the meantime, we are continuing to shelter at home.