Shake, Rattle, and...Worry

I was in a deep sleep when my bed began to shake. When I awoke, my first thought was, “Who is jumping on my bed?”

My eyes traveled to the end of the bed. No one was there. Could it be a ghost, I wondered.

I placed my hand on the bed to stop it from shaking, but the effort was useless. That’s when I fully awoke and realized that I was in an earthquake.

While Atlanta is on a fault line, this was the first earthquake I had ever experienced. I’ve been to California, where I worried about being in possible earthquakes, but turns out I felt my first earthquake in my home state. Ironic, huh?

Not surprisingly, the earthquake caused me to worry, especially since it was considered a moderate quake, rating 4.9 on the Richter Scale.

I began worrying about earthquakes way before the one that occurred here in 2003, though. And I’ve started to worry about them again after the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan. I’ve been worried about all of the people in Japan, and they are in my thoughts and prayers every day.

Of course, the natural disasters in Japan have led to more worries about earthquakes happening here. I worry about the devastation that they could cause and being trapped because of one. I know Georgia hasn’t seen big earthquakes for 100 to 200 years, but the earth is alive and always evolving. You can’t be too sure about anything these days, and that is very worrisome for a worrywart like myself. The more I dwell on the things that could happen, the more worried and stressed I become. The earth is something we cannot control, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Developing a positive mindset and letting go of the things I can’t control is definitely something I can control, though. Now, if only I could learn how to do that. Any ideas?

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