Our Weekend in Memphis Tennessee: Part 2

 Saturday morning somewhere between 3am and 5am Justin awoke to tornado sirens ( I apparently was totally out of it because I am normally the one to wake up and he sleeps through everything.) We turned on the weather channel and stayed tuned until we knew we were out of danger (which was important since we were on the 2nd story of our hotel.) We were then up a couple hours later and excitedly heading towards Nashville. We couldn't wait to get there and have some FUN!

 This picture was actually just a silly picture Justin posed for shortly after we left Thursday evening. This picture actually became our reality....

 This is a picture of the sky as some of the drama of our day started to unfold.

 I forget all the interstates that we ventured on Saturday so I will spare you the numbers. The interstate we started on after leaving Memphis had traffic stopped for miles so we turned around on the shoulder, along with other cars, and then went up and exit ramp (the wrong directions, again following other cars). So we took off trying to find ANY route that would take us north to get out of this whole area and then wind around to Nashville. ALL attempts would fail and after driving all possible routes will failure due to flooding, 4 hours of driving had resulted in digressing to only being 20 miles from where we had started that morning. Things got really tense for quite a little while during our search for flood freedom. Every few minutes while driving the weather service would come on and announce another "rotation" that had been detected. ALL of them were sitting right on top of us!!! We didn't know what to do all the ditches were FULL of water, all of the fields were FULL of water, all the exits were a dead end when because of...YEP you guessed is FULL OF WATER!!! No where to go for protection, no place to stop for protection, and the weather station even added, "You might not actually see the tornado coming because it's raining so hard that the radiar can't pick up whether these rotations are touching the ground. " I think this was the most stressful time I have ever endured in my life...so uncertain what to do....so limited with our options....we prayed and then we called people and told them to STOP what they were doing and PRAY for us. It was such a scary time.

We ended up in Covington, Tennessee and were stalled out because this interstate was our ONLY way out of Tennessee. There was some confusion amongst police officials about whether traffic should be allowed to pass through the 4 ft water. So we were told twice that traffic was not allowed to go through it...then we would get out of the line of traffic...then they traffic go through....this happened twice and then the third time we just stayed in line and then we were able to pass through the water.

 This is one site we saw as we passed through the high water! YIKES!!

 Many dealerships had their cars pulled as close to the building as they could...they were loosing the battle.

 On one interstate they moved us all to the south side of the interestate because the north side lanes looked like this.....

So needless to say Tennessee did not really WELCOME us this weekend....we never made it to Nashville. I told Justin, "For some reason the Lord did not want us in Nashville this weekend. He didn't have to be so dramatic about it though." Justin replied, "Yes He did, He knew it would take this whole chain of events to keep me away."

Thank God that we are home safe and I am thankful for the peace of going to the Lord during such desperate times and knowing that He will truley carry us through it all. The power of prayer never gets the credit is deserves. I don't know who prayed us, we only called Justin's parents during those heated moments, but I have heard there were many people who prayed us out of Tennessee. Thank you to those who prayed, PRAISE GOD for answered pray.

DANIELLE