Sunday, January 14, 2007

It Horrified Me

I had a dream the other night. It horrified me. In the dream, my family and I were living in a different home in a comfortable neighborhood, complete with trees and beautiful greenery. Everything was serene...or was it?

One day (in the dream) I woke up to find that there were now two holes by the couch in my family room. Each were about the size of a car tire. To my horror, the holes exposed a gap in the flooring into a wide chasm in the earth below, extending for over a mile in a huge, vacuous space below my house. Most unsettling, yet I didn't know what to do about it, other than cover them up.

In my dream, my youngest child was even younger -- thus about only 2 years old. Continually I was fussing about trying to cover those holes, so he wouldn't notice them. I didn't want him to fall through and in the dream, I didn't know I had any other options to get rid of the holes. We just had to live with them...or so I thought.

Then one morning, a neighbor ran screaming to our front door. "A huge hole has just opened up outside your home!" They screamed this at about the same time I noticed it myself. In fact, these yawning holes were beginning to happen all over the countryside. In front of our house, there was not just one hole, but two terrifying ones. The first had already torn apart the grass, gulping it down into another mile or two deeply enormous chasm in the earth. The other hole was just now tearing apart the grass and sinking fast, just feet away from the foundation of my home.

In the dream, I had time only to grab my child and run. Yet it bothered me terribly that I didn't have anything ready to take with us. I had in the dream (just like in my real life) begun to get things together in a 72 hour emergency kit, but hadn't ever finished. And now it was too late.

We were running and scrambling to escape. Last minute, not being able to stand it any longer and my family in safety, I ran back into the house against everyone's recommendations and tried to scoop up things that were important to take with us. This obviously put me in great danger, because now portions of the house were being swallowed up in the gargantuan-sized sinkhole. In the middle of all that foolishness, I woke up.

I couldn't shake the significance of the dream. I had BEGUN emergency preparations some time back, but I had not ever taken the time to finish. Now I will. And I'd love to take you along for the ride. The government recommends that we all have 72 hour kits, in addition to the ability to live for 2 weeks off of what we have rather than relying on someone else to take care of us during emergencies. We need to get prepared now.

Churches are also beginning to take note of the conditions around us. I, for example, belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a church that for some time has advised its members to be self-sufficient. I now intend to take that admonishment quite seriously. And I figured that as I make my journey towards complete self-sufficiency, I'd share my adventures with you, in the hopes that it will help you do the same. We need to get prepared now!

There's something quite powerful about being able to sleep at night, knowing that everything you can do has been done. May we all experience that, in spite of the crazy, topsy, turvey world we currently live in! We need to get prepared now. :0)

I aim to help you and me and all those in my midst do just that.

Warmly,

C.S. Bezas

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