Inspired by yesterday's post

Shooter and I were together with our small group on Wednesday night, and after yesterday's post I remembered part of a conversation we had that evening. I think I have enough "God Fearin'" folks reading that perhaps someone will be strange enough to have had this same feeling.

So, when I was a kid I was constantly freaked out by the Rapture. I grew up pretty strict Southern Baptist and it was hammered into our head that we better not do anything that we wouldn't want to be caught doing when the Rapture came. I vivdly remember being told one time that you should never walk on a grave because if the Lord came back you'd be knocked over dead and wouldn't go to heaven (that was my YOUTH PASTOR that told me that?!!?!?!). I must have been in my early tweens...just old enough to start going to the youth camps and stuff...when I really started to freak out about it. I think I'd gone to a youth camp where the focus was on Revelation and the story of the Rapture and everything. After that, if I'd wake up in the morning and couldn't find anyone, my first thought was that the Rapture had come and I'd been left behind. My parents routinely would get up and then head off to do errands and not wake me up. I remember one time running all over the house yelling for them and not being able to find them. Finally I ran into the garage and found the car gone....huge sigh of relief because they couldn't have possibly gotten in the car to be Raptured.

Now that Shooter and I have been married for a while, we do joke pretty often about our Rapture fears. I am usually up before Shooter, on the days we get to sleep in, and he'll usually joke that he woke up and couldn't find me and thought I'd been RAPTURED!

In small group, the folks I was talking to about this started laughing because they've had the same kind of fears, or played jokes on siblings who had that fear. One of the guys said that he used to play the joke on his brother....but would actually leave his clothes laid out on his bed under the covers. Now that's pretty cruel! But funny....

One of these days I think I'll do that to Shooter....hehehehe....

Have any of you dealt with the Rapture fear?