Preparations

It seems like we have a lot of things to prepare this week.  It's occurred to me that at seven months pregnant, it's probably time to start gathering a few baby things - we have coupons for a few things that we can get just for shipping fees that we planned to order over the next few months and I ordered the first of them this week.  And it's looking like the addition will be getting underway any day (though I know it probably looks like nothing whatsoever is going on), so this evening Ben and I are going to clear out the sunroom in preparation for tearing it down.  I'm going to miss that little room, but I keep reminding myself that a new family room will be so much more pleasant and useful!

While we've been preparing little things like this, we've also been watching things happening in the outside world and wondering...how does a person really prepare for bad things to come?

A lot of people believe that we're looking at the beginnings of complete economic collapse in our country and are preparing for scenarios like no one being able to get food or water for months or years.  It's pretty amazing what is advised to stockpile: everything from ibuprofen to ammunition.  It's a lot like Y2K, from my perspective.  We really don't know what's going to happen, so we try to think of everything that might and prepare for it.

I've had a thought that's gradually become more cohesive this time around than it was back in 1999: what is it in the Human psyche that reacts to danger by wanting to horde things?  And how much will it really protect us?

I think one answer is we always want to know what's coming next and when we don't, we often place an incredible amount of emphasis on one of two things: totally ignoring the possible threat...or trying to heavily prepare for whatever we can imagine happening.  And we have very vivid imaginations.  The Unknown scares us enough that we try to cover all the bases we can think of, even ones that are wildly improbable, because then we feel safe.  Unfortunately, when real bad things happen I don't think even our vivid imaginations cover all the results.

For instance, I know of one woman married to a man from Russia who recently mentioned what his parents did to prepare for the bad times they foresaw coming under Communist leadership.  They actually did lay by supplies and try to get ready for what was coming...and the first thing the new government did was raid houses, uncover secret storehouses, and take everything.

Not sure how you can prepare for that one.

Now granted, keeping supplies on hand to deal with problems like grocery stores not being stocked for a few weeks due to storms or earthquakes or other problems like that is a sensible thing to do.  But how exactly do you prepare for the collapse of your economy?  How to you get ready for the end of the world?  What about girding yourself to face World War III?

I think perhaps what we need to prepare isn't so much the pantry as our minds.  Because the truth is, if we find our security in stockpiling enough stuff, it's going to let us down.  There really is no way to physically lay by supplies for every eventuality.  So ultimately, surviving any cataclysmic event can't come down to "Did I prepare enough stuff?"  The answer will always be "no."  If you bought a thousand dollars worth of dried rations, you probably should've bought two thousand or five thousand.  If all you did was look at the future fearfully and say, "I have to DO SOMETHING!!" you will never be able to prepare enough.  

But your mind drives all that you do and every response that you make to every eventually.  It really does cover everything.  Focusing on physical survival is one thing: preparing your mind to take anything that comes your way is another.  In my opinion, the greatest thing any of us can do to prepare for anything at all is to learn to use our minds and see clearly.  Because the biggest danger of all seems to be inside us.  When things don't go our way, we panic, act irrationally, forget that God made us and God is in charge.  When really bad things happen, we despair, lose hope, and sometimes even do crazy things like riot and kill people.  When we let our minds get corrupted by things like fear, we no longer have the wisdom or the foresight to make wise preparations for even commonplace problems, let alone big ones.

We had a conversation last week about how the term "repentance" really means "to change your mind".  You can't truly and usefully repent of anything until your mind has been changed and you see clearly.  I think the exact same thing applies to preparing.  Preparing for anything, really, even a new addition and a new baby.  Ben and I have been preparing for the birth of this child for months by getting our minds ready for what's going to happen and how we're going to respond.  We don't have a bassinet or diapers or baby clothes, but we've spent a lot of time saying things like, "That's how we want our baby's spirit to look - just like that!"

We don't have rifles and ammunition laid by, but we do keep preparing for whatever could happen by constantly noting and examining how God proves he's in charge.  Not because we need the proof, but because that's our version of stocking the pantry so we feel safe.  Considering the first urge we often have is to DO SOMETHING, this sounds like not doing very much: but it's absolutely essential.  It's the foundation for being able to handle whatever comes our way.  The only way for us to make wise preparations for our future, no matter what it happens to be, is to keep our minds from being filled up with junk that will prevent us from seeing what's really happening and making decisions based on that.  If we put extra things in our pantry, we want to do so because we've reasonably and thoughtfully decided to, not because we're terrified we won't survive if we don't. Fear is one of the biggest corrupters of the mind out there and it's pretty easy to let it in when we hear things like "fiscal cliff" and "war" and "major tax increases".  But fear has a tough time getting a foothold if you've already prepared your mind to accept that even when fearful things occur, you don't have reason to fear because you are ultimately not in charge of what's going to happen and there is someone who is, someone who is trustworthy and good and who doesn't forget even about little things like making sure we have a house next door to Mom and Dad so we can take care of Grandma Lila.  Or giving Ben a job that allows us to make money to cover what we need and still give him an incredible amount of time to spend with Grandma and me.  That someone is not going to suddenly forget about us just because the stock market crashes or we go to war with Iran.  We keep reminding ourselves of those kinds of things and then we're at peace.

And that kind of preparation really does cover whatever happens.