A Week Ago…

A week ago yesterday was the most harrowing experience of our life. Dan said to me yesterday “I just can’t stop thinking about it.” I agree. We were talking last night for quite some time of how this whole experience has taught us so much and honestly, we do not wish it never happened (I know, that is a double negative). We are thankful it happened. God has taught us so much since then and we couldn’t be more thankful for that.

Update on the vehicle. We think we are FINALLY done with it! Yes it was totaled, but we had just put brand new tires on it two months ago. We wanted to see if we could swap those out and through the gracious work of a repair shop and the auto body shop, we were able to keep those new tires, despite the vehicle being toast. Monday it is going to be towed and hopefully we are just going to be done with it. Yesterday as we were dealing with the two places, we just couldn’t thank them enough. One place said they were just surprised one of their customers had experienced that tornado and it’s odd to hear that. We are not “special” people in that sense – we are just ordinary people whom God took through an extradordinary experience. And you too, have had those experiences as well. But with this experience, it’s been hard to know how best to display God’s glory – we verbally cannot express how much God’s majesty has been shown through all this. The wonderful experience we have had with our insurance company, the auto body shop and the repair shop, is also unexplainable. They have no clue how much easier they have made our life! God had them all lined up perfectly for us – we just had to walk the path.

I was in the car yesterday when 3:37 hit (when the tornado hit us a week ago), and I just started to cry. It has been such a whirlwind of a week, and as much as we are looking forward to things calming down, we don’t want the changes this experience has made in our lives, to change. Last night Dan and I were talking about what it has taught us. Dan said he learned and was reminded of how in control God is and we are not. Again he said the most helpless feeling was just sitting there and having to take it. To sit there and think “okay God, what are you doing here?” His majesty was so “powerful” during those 10 minutes of utter hail and tornado whizzing by. To hear the hail and that is the only you can hear or see – to know that God was just showering the land with baseball-softball size hail (by the way, many have asked if we could hear the tornado b/c they say it sounds like a train – the hail was just too loud to even pick up the noise of the tornado). To see our windows being shattered and Dan just telling me “it’s going to be okay Kristin” when in his mind Dan is thinking God, what ARE you doing? Dan said he has second-guessed himself all week. He has replayed and replayed the whole situation umpteen times in his head. As we talked about the “could’ves” I kept telling him that we just couldn’t do ANYTHING else. If we would’ve stopped before, we would’ve been hit by the tornado behind us. If we went faster we would’ve been picked up by the first one. God orchestrated it so that we would experience the second one. Dan kept thinking that what happened could’ve killed me (and him for that matter) and it’s just a very sombering experience. But I keep telling him that his quick actions saved me. People asked if we had prayed during the tornado…I did right before it came actually (said a prayer outloud with eyes wide open), but during the hail, God knew what we needed. To be honest, it wasn’t the first thing that came to mind when we were in it – I think there is always time for prayer, but at that moment, God was giving us everything we needed. God was giving Dan the knowledge and quick-thoughts he needed – God was with us the whole step of the way.

People asked us if we knew there were going to be storms and why did we still go? Well, we heard storms in the Midwest – we did not know they were going to be in Henryville. So, we didn’t think twice about going.

The week has been filled with talking about what happened, but it has been a joyous time too because we’ve been able to express how God has worked in our life. We truly have so much to be thankful for this week. It has been a really hard week, but like the Bible says, God works for the good of those who love Him and that our help truly does come from the Lord. Here are a few more ways we have to be thankful (I know I’ve already listed some on other posts).

Everything with the car was figured out by the end of this week. It is getting towed Monday. That means we can put it all behind us and move forward.

The amount that we are getting for our vehicle is more than what we even payed for it originally. What a blessing!

After watching a few youtube videos of the tornado, we are more humbled at the fact that we are alive today.

God lined up the perfect timing of getting our new tires off the wrecked Explorer in one day and getting old ones put on. The repair shop is even letting us “store” them there! We are hoping to get another Explorer so we will just have those tires put on (unless when we get it they are brand new, but we doubt it). But who “stores” tires for people – this shop does!

My parents are letting us borrow their car until we find a new vehicle (which we hope will be very soon) – we are so thankful for their generosity.

The generosity of our friends to bring home my parents’ vehicle for us from Holland on Monday, that saved us another 3 hours of driving after a LONG drive home from Louisville. AND, their generosity in helping us fix the shifting problem we had on Monday.

We are thankful that God has given us a good memory of what happened so that we can in turn thank Him for the ways that He protected us.

We are thankful for our friend who was available to check the weather for us while we were heading into nasty weather! We obviously didn’t have access to internet, so we knew we needed to call/text someone. She was SO great – giving us weather updates and also praying. I am thankful she was there for us that day!

We are thankful we never had to go to the hospital – in fact it never dawned on us. I will never forget jumping into the vehicle after we surveyed the damage and realizing that our vehicle was drivable – though it looked like a disaster.

We are thankful that we saw a familiar face, Walt Mueller, when we were checking in. He gave us a big hug after we told him what happened and it was a sense of relief and that we were going to be okay. We will never forget that moment – seeing him. God placed him in our path for a reason at the moment – God knew what we needed. We needed something familiar as everything else felt chaotic.

I am just so thankful for Dan. When we arrived at the hotel in Louisville, EVERYONE was staring at our vehicle because it looked like we just got the tar beat out of it (oh wait, we did!). Dan told me he was going to quick run and see where to park and I had to stay and watch the vehicle b/c anybody could go in and steal our stuff b/c our windows were broken. I remember watching him as he walked away and he quickly came back. I just wanted to run to him and cry. When he came back, I just fell into his arms and told him “I just need to cry.” At that moment, I felt so out of control, it felt like everything was out of control, and I just wanted to feel “safe.” People were everywhere, we were getting looks from everywhere, and I really had no idea what just happened to us. I will NEVER forget that hug from Dan. He just told me quietly, “it’s going to be okay Kristin.” He was right.

As I said earlier, Dan has second-guessed himself, but we both know that we were meant to be where we were at that specific time. God didn’t want it any other way.

I know you may be getting sick of me talking about this all, but it truly has been a life-changing experience for us. It will forever be etched in our minds.

Through this all, we have said to ourselves, how can you NOT believe there is a God?