I can just hear Scar’s song with the hyenas in The Lion King. The ORIGINAL Lion King movie, not that horrible off key remake.

Be prepared…

I have this urgency in my spirit to be prepared. A handful of my friends have agreed that they too feel as if something is coming. Obviously we’ve been through two years of a pandemic in which we’ve been isolated, food and toilet paper stores stretched thin, and forced to make due with what we have or learn to go without at times. This is a different kind of preparation that I’m striving for.

I’m not just talking about being prepared with a couple of weeks worth of pantry goods, though that isn’t a bad thing. I’ve been feeling the need to be prepared to leave in a hurry, be able to survive in the woods for a couple of days, or at least make an impromptu drive to my dad’s house 900 miles away and not have to stop except to refuel. I’ve been relentlessly trying to get rid of things, telling myself that it’s because we want to move and we need to pare things down, but I feel it’s more than that.

I feel the Lord is pushing me to not care about physical things as much because soon, who knows how soon, I’m not going to have as much of them. I have a foreboding feeling. Perhaps it’s the Holy Spirit giving me a heads up, and perhaps it’s just my human worry because I’m seeing gas jump to over four dollars a gallon and a whole chicken at Aldi runs me eight dollars instead of six. I suspect we will have to sacrifice some amenities in the near future and I find myself preemptively cutting them off so that it isn’t necessary later.

I’m also hoarding physical copies of books about things that I feel are important. Books about gardening and homesteading, home repairs, raising animals, parenting, classic literature and even medical emergencies and prepping are starting to pile up on my shelves. I’m pretty sure my husband thinks I’m crazy.

I could just drown you in “what ifs”. What if the internet goes down, on any scale, and we’re without access to information, entertainment, education and communication? What if my phone dies and all my numbers are just gone? What if we can’t afford food and I have to raise animals so we can have meat because it’s the only way? What if we have no choice but to repair our house ourselves because we don’t have the money to hire a professional? More than canned goods in the basement, I’m hoarding knowledge.

I realize that I sound a tiny bit crazy, but if you look at the state of the world, and especially the United States, I think the case could be made that I am not in the least little bit overreacting. I’m not trying to scare anyone into becoming a crazy hermit living in the hills and skinning squirrels to survive, but I am planning to get my family onto a few private acres of land in a low cost of living state.

And I’m going to learn to raise a cow, dang it.