Life is like a train track part II

Part II:

Once we were back on the air, we stayed on until after 11pm that first night, churning out the latest information for food, shelter, help, anything people might need to know. To say we were all exhausted, would not even come close, and yet, sleep would not equal rest for many weeks.

Something strange was growing in our newsroom..nobody seemed to know what day it was, and we all had the same look in our eyes..kind of a zombie-like/what has just happened look. Every day since then, we have been wrapped up in that tornado in some fashion. We started in rescue/recovery, to where we are now, rebuilding.

For the first week after, we wrote on a big dry-erase board hanging on the wall: "Today is _______", because we got tired of asking each other again and again, "what day is it?" Time essentially stopped Wednesday, April 27th at 5:13 p.m. Hundreds of peoples from all parts of the city were living in a park rec-room, most of our student interns had to leave, get away from the tragedy..it was simply too much to bear.

Fast-forward to three months later and things are getting better. I no longer have that feeling of panic in my chest like, " where am I?" when I drive down the street to get home. That happened a lot the first few weeks..on the roads I had driven down for months, I would feel lost and then frightened for moments..then I would realize, okay, I know where I am. We brought counselors on our show to talk to our viewers about grief, loss, recovery, patience, feeling lost, you name it, they talked about it.

The reason I wanted to share this, is because if you have experienced these same things, I want you to know it will be okay, things will get better.

"Life is like a train track" comes from one of my favorite preachers, Adrian Rogers. He said we get the good and the bad at the same time some times..and he was right. April 27th started out as the happiest day of our life, since our wedding day..and then it became one of the saddest just hours later.

We eventually did celebrate Bryan passing the bar, but every thing in our life has so much more meaning. We take nothing for granted. Our shelter, food, clothing, everything is so much sweeter. We also have a renewed appreciation for our family. April 27th could have been the day we found out Bryan passed the bar and also the last day we were on the earth. But, thankfully it was not. We are still here, God has something for us to do..so we continue down the train track, with a few scrapes, but still moving forward to a new life.

Janie

**the photo is the last thing I saw on the air before the power went out in the studio. I work right in front of the stadium, and we thought the tornado was headed directly for us, we all took cover on the set and braced for the worst.

Life is like a train track.............

So much has happened since I last wrote. It may take a while..so hold on.
Here we go: a month and two days after the last post, we had the most wonderful and the most horrible day, all at once. Since February, we had been counting down the days until April 27th: that's when the results of the bar exam would be released. On the morning of the 27th at 8:46 a.m., my phone rang, and Bryan said " my name is on the list! I did it!" We were beyond happy! Eight long years of hard work, moving from family, going back to school to get two new degrees, moving from city to city, working every holiday..it all came down to that moment and we had crossed the finish line! We talked about how to celebrate, etc. and then I hung up the phone, got ready, and went to work. Everyone had been helping me count down the days and when I walked in, we all cheered!! It was very sweet! Of course, we had both called our parents and loved one's with all the good news. Little did we know, less than 9 hours, our world would turn upside down and we wouldn't talk about this remarkable achievement again for almost two weeks.
I knew we could have some bad storms that day, but nothing could prepare anyone for what happened at 5:13 p.m. that day. An EF-4 tornado rolled through the heart of Tuscaloosa chewing up everything in its path. Thousands of homes and hundreds of businesses were destroyed. 43 people were killed that day and hundreds more appeared on the initial missing list. There are very few experiences in life that can compare to what happened to our temporary home. I heard some of the National Guardsman that came to help compare it to "war zone". Our home was spared, and it became a temporary hotel for 6 people for the next few days. Two bedrooms, one bath, and we made it work somehow. Everywhere you looked in our little rental, you would see people sleeping, and food was everywhere. Bryan turned into a chef and kept the food coming. We lost our ability to be on air from the moment it hit until about 6:30 a.m. Friday morning. During that time, our crew stayed out in ground zero shooting stories, and I hunkered down in our one working edit bay gathering everything together and making a game plan for the moment we came back on air. We finally got back up with our first newscast at 1:00 p.m. Friday, and that's when I finally saw what had happened. Going to work and coming home were re-routed beyond the damaged areas, so it wasn't until the first videos rolled that I saw what everyone else already knew...it was catastrophic. And, there was no way we would ever be the same.

On this one day, we had gotten the best news of our lives so far, and just hours later, we had survived a deadly tornado, it missed our home by 1/4 mile.