A woman who was paralyzed from the waist down after shielding her two young boys from a tornado says that she has no regrets and would do it all again if necessary.

The Detroit Free Press is reporting on the story of 44 year-old  Amy Hawkins of Hendersonville, Tennessee who nearly lost her life in a tornado outbreak on April 7, 2006.

The storm completely destroyed her home and sent bricks and mortar raining down upon her and her two young sons, ages three and six, while they lay huddled on the floor of the basement. All she remembers of that fateful day is laying on top of her boys and reciting the Lord’s Prayer over and over again.

“Through dreams I remember the last brick that hit me,” she says about the moment she lost consciousness.

When she awoke, she was laying under a pile of bricks.

A neighbor had rushed both boys to nearby Hendersonville Medical Center but dared not moved Hawkins whose twisted and crumpled body obviously needed more professional care.

Sumner County sheriff’s deputy Tim Sebring was the first responder on the scene.

“The whole house, it was just gone,” recalls Sebring. “I noticed a female all mauled up underneath some bricks.”

She was making noises and trying to move but he knew from the sight of her injuries that she was in serious condition.

“I just grabbed her neck and held her there,” he said. “I just kept talking to her and praying over her. It seemed forever until EMS got there.”

Hawkins would soon learn that she was paralyzed from the waist down; however, over the past 10 years she has gained more feeling in her legs and feet and believes she may one day walk again.

In December of 2014, Hawkins underwent spinal surgery on the television show The Doctors to relieve back pain that required medications that left her in a fog. Doctors inserted “titanium rods that look like train tracks back there,” she said, but the procedure took away 90 percent of her discomfort.

Although she certainly has a lot to complain about, she doesn’t spend much time feeling sorry for herself.

“I’ve never asked why,” she said. “I’m here. I saved the boys. If it meant that I died then so be it.”

Surviving the tornado is what mattered most, especially for a woman whose family has seen too many parents die, including her own stepfather who died just before her 12th birthday.

“So I asked God while I was young to never take me away from my kids. He didn’t take me away, so that’s why I don’t ask why.”

Looking back on it, Hawkins says she wouldn’t do anything differently.

“I’ve always told them, ‘I saved you once. If I’ve got to do it again, I’ll fall out of my wheelchair and do it again’.”

A mother’s love knows no boundaries!

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