Of Tornadoes and Overtime

It's very odd for me, typing in cnn.com, weather.com, foxnews.com, and msnbc.com and seeing a little town 40 miles from where I live (in fact, those pictures were almost all taken from the parking lot of the church where we go to mass on Holy Days of Obligation; it's mighty strange to see a national news broadcast from a very, very familiar place). The headlines, "At Least 13 Dead", "Deadly Storm", "Utter Destruction in South Alabama", "Students May Still be Trapped Inside Demolished High School"; I might know one of those people. Not well. Maybe not even directly, but it is a small world and it's an even smaller Catholic world, especially in South Alabama.

I've seen tornadoes before. Deadly ones. I've been through many major hurricanes that left virtually nothing standing. I am used to seeing destruction from weather. I'm not used to waiting to hear if my father was able to make it safely home driving through those tornadoes, watching the radar for where I live and wondering if there are tornadoes hitting right now, talking to my mom who says "ok gotta go now, the storm is too bad", or wondering if my sister is still going to even be able to fly into Birmingham and if she does, will she be able to be picked up all from over 300 miles away. I don't like it either. I would much rather be in the storm.