Large Turbulance and Storms

Have you ever been in a plane and seen a towering cumulonimbus cloud
growing? It's an awesome sight. I hear that looking down on an
electrical storm is one of the most beautiful things you could ever
see. When I flew, it was 2 days after the Air France A340 crashed. One
of the things I did before my flight, at 4 am (mythbusters was on thank
god!) and while mythbusters was on commercial I flipped to the weather
channel and saw that there was a storm right in our path. I was
worried because I saw what happened to the Air France flight. So we
through the storm to go above it. There was virtually no turbulance and
guess what we didn't crash and die. Whew, what a relief. Has anyone
been in such high turbulance that you thought you'd crash? Tell me your
story.

I mean we flew through the storm clouds not "so we through the storm"
and when I said the storm was right in our path I meant while we were
flying.