In 2014, a horrific tornado swept across Arkansas, leaving many devastated, including one mom who lost two sons. Yet days after, and from a hospital bed where she recovered from the Arkansas tornado, the mother said, “I know that God is good.”

About the Mother Who Lost Two Sons in an Arkansas Tornado

April 27, 2014, Vilonia, Arkansas saw one of the many tornados that tore through the state that month, yet for April and Daniel Smith, this one was catastrophic.

On that tragic day, the couple lost two sons when the eye of the storm hit their street.

When the family heard warnings, they sheltered in their bathtub, using a mattress to seek protection from the Arkansas tornado. But the Smith family’s home was pulled from its foundation, injuring the entire family and taking the lives of the two children, 9-year-old Cameron and 7-year-old Tyler.

April revealed that her older son Tyler had been talking about heaven for quite some time. A few hours before the twister took his life, Tyler turned to his mom and told her he was ready to go to heaven.

“Will you miss me?” Tyler asked.

While both parents sustained serious injuries, they did not lose their physical lives. However, for any parent, these two may have felt they lost a piece of themselves after they lost two sons in the Arkansas tornado.

And in the parents’ grief, they couldn’t even be together. In fact, due to Daniel having suffered from a head trauma, he was recovering at a different hospital than April. And in those first few days after she knew she lost two sons in the Arkansas tornado, the doctors had also told April that her husband was probably brain dead due to the extent of his injuries.

In her time at the hospital, April was visited by family and friends, including her pastor and her friend, Jessica Lane Sowards. Sowards, who is a blogger, was, as she put it, so moved by the mother’s “unwavering faith,” that she wanted to share it with the world. Thus, the Hodgepodge Darling blogger wrote the family’s story on her blog.

Sowards wrote in her blog about her visit with her mourning friend saying, “While Jeremiah (Jessica’s husband) and I held her hands and kissed her face, she wept. She had questions about that night. She had heard that Jeremiah found the boys and she told him she was comforted it was him because she knew he would have prayed over them. We all cried.”

As the blogger recalled her feelings, saying she was angry with God for allowing this to happen, she shared April Smith’s words of faith, telling Jessica not to be angry and saying, “God is good.”

“I have peace. I know I have more pain to go through that I probably can understand,” April told her friend from the hospital bed. “But I have supernatural peace. I don’t know what God has for me and my husband that our boys couldn’t be here for, but I do know that He is good. His plan is good.” 

In response, Jessica shared with her audience, “She is in a tremendous amount of emotional pain, but she is not in despair. There’s a difference, and the difference is Christ.”

After the blogger shared this story with a photo of her friend in the hospital bed, the story went viral. The blog has been viewed more than 1.5 million times.

And once April Smith recovered, she was able to share her story and how she could say that God is good through such a tragic event. In an interview with Life Today, she said, “I cried out to God, take this pain.”

Check out the video on YouTube here:

In the interview, April told the interviewers, “I didn’t know how it was going to work out, but I knew that God is good.”

Continuing on in her Life Today TV interview, the mother shared, “I had to press into what I already believed in, you know, that life is a vapor, that I should be blessed because death—Jesus has victory over the grave.”

And since the day that April Smith lay in that hospital bed telling her friend that God is good despite her loss, she continued to share her story with more audiences as a testament and an encouragement to people.

About a year later, the women’s ministry, IF: Gathering featured April Smith and Jessica Sowards in an event themed “God is good all the time.”

In response to April’s people have expressed that they’ve been moved, encouraged in their own faith, and thankful for April sharing such a vulnerable piece of her life.

One commenter on Facebook said, “I told my husband about your story. We both cried at our kitchen table. We are parents of two little boys & held them tighter last night. Thanks so much for sharing your faith!”

“Thank you for allowing such a painful and devastating experience minister to so many people, and for still being able to proclaim that God is good,” shared another.

It’s amazing that a mother who lost two sons in an Arkansas tornado can lean into and trust God in such a horrific experience. But for this mom, this sad story was to be used from something good.

“Their role was complete, and I got to live to see it,” she shared. “They’re home…their next breath was with the Father—I believe that with my whole heart…in heaven a thousand years is a day so my kids are hanging out with Jesus for a day, and even if they were to ask, ‘Where’s my mom?’ Jesus is gonna say, ‘You’ll see her tomorrow.”