Remember that from Sanford & Sons? Every time there was anything about anything 'ole Fred was clutching his heart, talking about he was about to die and join his deceased wife in heaven. If I may I'll make a little light of our afternoon earthquake, not to be confused with an afternoon tea, but certainly no California-style drama either...
This afternoon at almost 2pm, I return from grabbing a fast food, didn't-need, lunch to go back to the satellite office at which I was working out of today. Leaving the drive-thru I put my drink between my legs to steer and wouldn't you know the top pops off and that sweet iced tea splashed out. You can guess where it all went to. Great, I thought. Now how am I going to get back into the building without looking like I have a little pee-pee problem. Embarrassing! I wiped my pants best I could and thanked God I had on navy blue pants, wondering why these kinds of things always seem to happen to me.
Shortly after coming back I began helping a rather large, football-player looking type dude and we felt some vibrating that quickly escalated to the building shaking. When I tell you the building was swaying I am not exaggerating. If you have never experienced an earthquake there are no words that I can pen that would explain to you clearly what it feels like for a solid structure that should not move, to actually be moving. Very eery and can cause quite some panic.
As the shaking increased, glass window behind me started rattling and literally the floor on my feet was vibrating heavily I exclaimed that it was an earthquake and told the 4 people in the office to take cover under the large table. Immediately my large football-player-looking friend dove under the table. Now that was a site to see. Two of our folks just stood there and I couldn't figure out why there weren't moving. Only later did I remember that they didn't speak English and I neglected to tell them in Spanish that this was an emergency. My co-worker came in. I saw her feet and she asked what was going on. I told her it was an earthquake and we need to get in a doorway or under something sturdy. Shortly thereafter the shaking stopped. "We need to evacuate," I told her. I made the ridiculous move to go back to the desk for my purse and phone. Don't they always tell you in an emergency don't go back for anything? Didn't mama teach me to listen?
We grabbed our stuff and headed out. The entire 5 floor building was emptying out on the stairwell. As I'm flying down the stairwell amongst other employees, citizens and children I realize I'm way ahead of my co-worker. Thinking that wasn't very nice of me and not wanting to be "that" person, who in an emergency only thinks about herself, I thought about what I could do to help. As I reached the landing of the 3rd floor I see people piling in from that level. Out in the hallway are two women with three small children between them. The smallest one is a baby in a stroller. People are passing them and because they have the stroller they aren't pushing on ahead. I went into the hallway and said "ayuda, ayuda?" and gestured to take one baby out of the arms of one of the women. At that time a gentleman approaching the stairwell stopped to help. He tried to take the baby out of the stroller but he was careful not to move without the mom's okay. I told him to take the stroller and the mom lifted the baby. We headed out.
When we got outside I gave the baby back and they proceeded away from the building with tons of "gracias." I found my co-worker not far away and both of us shaken up a bit took to our cell phones to try to reach someone. At that moment we had no idea how widespread this was. A few minutes later it dawned on me that we could listen to the radio in my car. Then we learned of the earthquake and how far of an area it had been felt.
It wasn't until almost an hour later as I began my car ride home that I finally managed to get through to the Hub. Thank God he was at home with the kids. When he first felt the shaking he thought the kids were upstairs doing something crazy enough to shake the whole house. He went upstairs and realized what was happening. Looking out of the window he discovered 4 or 5 of our neighboring families in the middle of the street, not quite sure what they had experienced. The Hub checked the news and opened the window of our bedroom to yell out to them. "It was an earthquake," he shouted. "No way, really?" they answered. "Yup, and the news says pack your bags. More are 'a comin," he joked. Panic stricken faces asked him if he was serious. That Hub, there is rarely a time when the truth comes out first. "No, just kidding. But it was an earthquake, though."
When I finally made it home amongst the gridlock that was this afternoon's commute I took to Facebook and twitter to check things out. Not surprisingly I could go back far enough to when statuses were boring and nothing of interest was happening, other than people's choice for lunch food and plans for a Tuesday evening. Scrolling up, I read through all my wall posts of people's reaction to the quake. Of course, everyone has something to say and isn't amazing that we can read folks first-hand thoughts of what they were experiencing. That is priceless.
Many of those posts are about getting your heart right with God because situations like this remind us of how undetermined the next minute is. No one expected to live through an earthquake this afternoon. Many of us were very shaken up. I admit, it is a good opportunity to think about where I stand with God. For me, I am a faithful Christian and I love the Lord. I can say that during that time of panic and anxiety I was calm and directed. I knew what it was, and I knew how to react appropriately in taking cover. I knew to tell our office to evacuate and best of all, I stopped to help someone in need.
The events of 9/11 caused us all to reflect on how we would react in that type of emergency, how would we get out of a building, what would we do? For me, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on who I want to be in that type of emergency. I have long prayed that if I am ever in an emergency situation that my gut instinct will be to help someone else in need. I am so thankful that today God prompted me to help those women. Without God, and my prayer to Him being brought back to my memory as I trotted down the stairwell I don't know that I would have stopped to make a difference.
Is that your prayer? It has been, and will continue to be, mine. I pray that God will use me in whatever situation He puts me. The calm days when all is peaceful and I'm able to have a conversation about God with someone and the not-so-calm days when I'm fleeing a building after an earthquake when I can offer hands to someone in need. Both of those are a result of the Jesus in me. Both of those benefit someone else in need.
I'll leave my blog today with a Youngest charm for you. We like to watch Hoarders on TV. We know, our addiction to watching is our own sick obsession. That said, we also watched "Sweepers" the other day, the show about people whose full time job is entering sweepstakes. How do they make that possible? It's unbelievable. As we're watching I say to the Hub, "I want that job. Can I stay home and enter sweepstakes all day long?" Youngest says "Mom! If you enter those and win a bunch of stuff you will become a hoarder and I will move out of this house forever!" I say, "No Youngest! You can't leave. You told me you would live with ME forever." And Youngest comes over and gives me the biggest, smooshiest hug and says "oh yes, mom. I'm going to live here a long time. But only until I'm 19," and he turns the smooshy voice off and with the most serious of faces says "when I'm 19 I got's to go!"
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