The preacher even predicted the time - 6:00 pm. My first question was - which time zone? But turns out he had that covered too. First an earthquake in New Zealand (6:00 pm New Zealand time) with devastation to follow from the earthquake, affecting each time zone as it turned 6:00 pm. The hub and I agreed to go out as little as possible Saturday, in case some nuthead saw this prediction as carte blanche to turn a machine gun on at the park, or some other horrendous act. As I learned as a public defender, people convinced there are no repercussions are apt to do the worst acts towards others.
And once the clock struck 5:01 pm, I called my sister (seeing as she is on Eastern time) to see if she was still here. She answered the phone. But that wasn't enough for me - I had to make sure Emily was still there, and she was. See, I don't hold religious doctrine to my heart like others, but I knew that if it the predictions were true, babies (and dogs) were the only ones guaranteed to be taken to heaven.
Finally, 6:01 pm at my house, and we all stayed. I looked up internet stories to see that some people had abandoned their houses, mortgages, even pets because their belief in the rapture was so strong. And all these people will return to their lives wrong. Accordingly, some people took pictures of clothes they had laid out on sidewalks and in streets, as if the people wearing them had been taken to heaven. I got a hoot out of those photos.
Because I have to. I have a fear of 2012 that sometimes consumes me, like trying to understand death or the infiniteness of space. Some things I just can't think about too hard or I'll think of nothing else. In a world where we can look up anything on the internet, learn any fact we need at the press of a few buttons, where science has taken us beyond what could have been imagined even fifty years ago, there are still unanswered questions. And once I became a mom, it became less of what would happen to me, and more about what world I would leave Britton in. I hope with everything in my being that she lives far and long past me, but the whole uncertainty of disaster removes completely the notion of dying by natural causes. Whether it's the rapture, or a tsunami, or world war, or the eruption of Old Faithful in Yellowstone, or the end of the Mayan calendar, it's something I don't control. And no google search will answer.
So I have to remember to let go and control what I can. Happy to have the world as we knew it, Britton and I made cupcakes on Sunday. She even insisted on putting on her apron I made her.
And today the hub and I picked Britton up early from daycare, got her home, and tickled her nonstop (in her WVU overalls no less!). Because if anything comes out of these end-of-the-world predictions, it's that all I need is for Britton to be safe and happy. The rest? It's just a bonus - my heaven on earth.
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