We all know that last week there was a catastrophic earthquake in Japan. That earthquake led to a tsunami. Both events have led to a possible nuclear meltdown in Japan. I have a friend living in Japan who has been ordered to stay inside of her house in order to avoid the radiation. Watching the footage was horrifying for me. I sat here frozen in horror as I watched a wall of water taking over the streets of a Japanese town. I saw fires erupting and people fleeing. I watched from the other side of the world and I felt helpless. I would have done anything to help some of those people and to save some of those lives. Sadly, all I could do was to watch from the other side of the world.
Shortly after the disaster in Japan, the Facebook statuses started. Many of my friends seem to think that the end of the world is near. They believe that Jesus is coming back to Earth to take them up in the rapture. Earthquakes, they believe, are signs of the impending apocalypse. I am not here to crap on any one's beliefs. I don't do that. I hate when people do it to me, so I try my hardest not to do it to them. But I am here to say that natural disasters freak me out. They make me question the certainty of my existence and they make me doubt and mistrust the ground beneath my feet.
I hate the feeling that I have after a catastrophe strikes our planet. Whether it be a flood, an earthquake, or an act of terrorism, these catastrophes make me feel powerless and vulnerable. When I really start thinking about it, I realize that it's because I am powerless and vulnerable. I am a small person on a big planet. I have control over very little. It's terrifying. Perhaps that lack of control would feel better and less horrifying if I thought that Jesus was coming to take me to heaven. Maybe I could take comfort in the paradise that awaits me. It seems like if I was a devout Christian, all of this would be much easier to stomach. But I'm not.
I'm not a convinced, faithful follower of Christ. I'm at best a skeptic and possibly an atheist. I'm just unconvinced. I'm not ruling out that there may be a God and that he may be sending signs that he's going to bring an end to our puny, human existence. But I am also not ruling out the possibility that we have simply abused our planet too much and now it's changing. Either way, I am powerless. Either way, I don't want to think about it.
As a mother, I want my children to grow up. I want my kids to experience life and grow up and fall in love. I want them to go to college and read books. I would love it if they got the opportunity to live abroad and meet new people. I have hopes and dreams for my children that don't include not being able to save them as the ground crumbles beneath them and we all fall into a flaming abyss. But my fears and my desires don't change the fact that if it's going to happen, there is not much that I can do about it.
All I can do is keep doing what I am doing and hope for the best. I don't want to sit here and stress about the impending apocalypse. I know that some people might be excited about it because they believe that they get to go home to Jesus, but I'm not. Even if there is a Jesus and my kids get to go and be with him, I still think it sucks that they don't get to live out their lives. And more than anything, I am really sick of people on Facebook reminding me that my children's untimely demise is a possibility.
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