Earthquake?

I live in the midwest.  And I pretty much always have, aside from one summer of living in New York.  I grew up in Iowa and now I live in Kansas.  That basically sums up my state residencies.  We get tornadoes.  I like tornadoes.  They're exciting and adventurous and most of the time, you can prepare to keep yourself safe.  I love stormy weather with big booming thunders and lightening that flashes and jolts all the way down to the ground.  I love the power behind it, knowing that God is the one providing this amazing show.  As a kid, I considered becoming a storm chaser.  However, I wasn't great at weather facts in school and decided I wouldn't be able to do it.  Still, as an adult, storms just fascinate me.

I found that not everyone shared my enthusiasm for tornadoes, especially at the Bible college I attended.  Because there were people there who had never experienced a tornado or even a good Iowa thunderstorm.  Thunderstorms frigthened some of them and tornadoes terrified them.  They preferred the earthquakes.  I had never experienced an earthquake, and as adventurous as I am, I had no desire to be in one.  Earthquakes are what terrified this Iowa girl.  There was no warning whatsoever.  All of a sudden, the earth begins to shake and there's nothing I can do about it.  It didn't sound exciting to me at all.

So, still being in the midwest, I assumed I was safe from earthquakes.  However, I began to wonder when earthquakes were happening in other unusual parts of the country how safe I really was.  Well Saturday night, I found out.  I'm no longer in an earthquake-free zone.

My husband and I went to Topeka for a marriage conference.  Some friends from church watched the 3 kiddos while we were gone from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning when we went to church.  Seth and I came home late Saturday night, the kids staying another night at our friends' house.  We stopped to get some ice cream and then came home to an empty and quiet house.  Seth decided he wanted a bath so that's what he did.  I sat on the toilet to talk with him like I often do when he takes a bath.

Suddenly, the toilet started to shake beneath me.  I'm extremely grateful I wasn't on it to use it!  Things in the living room were rattling.  At first I thought someone was running through the house, but then realized no one else was there.  Then I wondered if a big truck at driven by.  But it was lasting quite a bit longer than a truck.  As everything continued to shake, I grabbed a hold of the doorknob on the bathroom door and the side of the sink.  I looked at Seth, very wide-eyed, I'm sure, as all I could think was, "Please don't tell me this is what I think it is!"  Finally, the shaking stopped.

Seth was in a very big earthquake as a kid so I considered him an expert.  I looked at him and asked, "Was that an earthquake?"  Apparently, the earthquake wasn't quite over.  Seth sat silently in the tub and listened.  I didn't understand what he was doing.  I was still holding on to the doorknob and the sink as I waited for his answer.  After a bit, I thought maybe he didn't hear me.  So I asked again.  "Ssshhh" he responded.  Then he finally decided that it must have been as he had heard the final rumbles stop.

The earth may have stopped shaking, but certainly I hadn't.  It was nearly 11:00pm.  We just had an earthquake.  And my kids weren't here!!!!  My kids just experienced their first earthquake without their mother to comfort their fears.  Were they scared?  Did they even feel it?  Were they even awake?  Those are questions that I would not get the answers to until the next morning at church.  But I couldn't stop thinking about them, or what I had just gone through.

Meanwhile, Seth started looking up information on the earthquake that hit Idaho when he was a kid.  He told me the story, for the umpteenth time, and looked up pictures and reading articles that he thought I would find interesting.  However, in my state of fear at the time, I had no desire to hear what earthquakes are capable of.  Seth had to poke fun at me a bit, because I was quite a bit more freaked out than even I thought I would have been after my first quake.

We did go to bed eventually, and I surprisingly slept very well.  But Sunday morning, I just wanted to hold my kids and couldn't wait to see them.  At church, we heard several stories about different people's experiences as this was the first earthquake most people had ever felt.  Finally, I could hear how my kids handled it.  K and A were asleep in the bed and didn't feel a thing.  J was on the floor next to their bed and thought the girls were shaking the bed so much that they shook the room.  He did admit to me that he was kinda scared.  Only one other person in the house felt it.  So, it was in general, a normal night for them.

Now that I have actually felt an earthquake, my opnions have only been cemented in my thinking.  Tornadoes - good.  Earthquakes - bad.  I don't like being unprepared and earthquakes hit suddenly, without warning, no way of preparing.  I'm minding my own business, and then all of a sudden, I'm shaking with no control.  Nope, don't like it.  I guess I missed an aftershock last night, but that's fine with me.  There's no need to be shaking up my house without warning.  Just give me the thunderstorms, snow storms, and tornadoes and leave the earthquakes in California, please.