I’ve spent the last three days watching the weather almost non-stop. I’m fried. I could never be a weather forecaster. I just… couldn’t.

Monday, I watched the storms roll through Arkansas as I helped my parents get back home to Texas. I watched the storms move across the state, and I’d call my parents when I felt they needed to get off the road and wait a storm out. As they made it through safely, I continued to watch… my heart aching for those in the path of the tornadoes and flooding.

The next day, I watched to get a feel for what was headed this direction, and I also watched the weather back in Texas… once again giving my parent’s updates as they ran errands. Texas needs rain so bad… so, so, so bad. But the storms that popped up had a violent hand. I feared for the safety of friends, family and strangers alike.

By the time we went out last night, my stomach was in knots. I feared what the next day would bring to us. I once again had a heavy heart for those affected by the wrath of nature.

We got home from being downtown, and in an eerie similarity to almost a year ago, my husband and I slept in shifts… keeping weary eyes on the radar.

Thankfully, we do have a basement to retreat to if it got ugly. But we talked about, “What would we do if…?” I couldn’t wrap my brain around the rest of that sentence.

I did get some sleep, being jerked awake by National Weather Service warnings blasting out of the TV. Here in Nashville, we were thankfully spared. Murfreesboro sustained a lot of damage, but Nashville itself was okay. However, we watched with knotted stomachs as cities in Alabama were hit hard. And we still watch as I type this as the storms continue to march across Georgia, east Tennessee, etc. The death count rises. The video and photos tug at my heart.

I am so thankful to have been spared, but I ache at the same time for those who WERE affected. I keep reading posts on Twitter… people who are pausing to reflect on the day’s events. We are humbled by nature once again.

I grew up in “Tornado Alley.”  We not only had fire drills, we had tornado drills. I grew up with this stuff… and even with that being said, I will NEVER “get used to” this stuff. The fear I have for them… the respect I give to them… tornadoes are horrible.  Tornadoes are humbling. Tornadoes remind us all that we don’t have control over everything, and all we can do sometimes is hope and pray for the best. And if “the best” is not what we get, we hope and pray for the strength to carry on and pick up the pieces.