What If? | Fargo Photographer

My oldest daughter Alyssa tends to be quite the little worrier and ask many questions that start with “What if…” A lot of time she will start her questions like this…”What if, and you can’t say this could never happen…and then continue with her deep question.” Most questions have to do with natural disasters and yes, she usually has to check the weather radar before she goes to bed at night just for peace of mind. Yesterday morning I woke up early to travel to Duluth with my husband for a work meeting. We left my youngest two kiddos at my parents place a few miles out of Wadena and took Alyssa with us to check out Lake Superior and bum around for the day. On our way back home we started to hear weather reports that weren’t sounding too good…my parents were out of power so we kept calling to check on the other kids and fill my parents in on what we were hearing on the radio. Then from the back seat all the “What if…” questions began to kick in with a lot of panic…trying to hide my nervousness I finally said, these are just warnings that the weather is bad – a tornado will not happen, everything will be okay. As we came into Wadena is started pouring and hailing, as we got to the other end of town metal chunks, siding, tree branches, and what not were blowing around…then we came to the sight of the high school and community center roof on top of houses, people in their cars upside down, houses flattened, and trees everywhere. Filled with panic and shock we realized what had happened just a few minutes prior to our passing through. My husband and dad headed back into town to check on my grandma and help people out…I’m posting a few snapshots from what they saw. As my nerves started to calm and things settled in, I started thinking of all kinds of “What if” questions…”What if we didn’t take the 5 min DQ stop to get icecream? What if we didn’t take a minute to pull over and switch drivers? But a person can’t go there…we can only trust that everything happens for a reason and God was protecting us and everyone else around!