Well, It’s 2:11 PM…. I Guess We’re All Still Here.…

So, today was the day. According to a particularly loud corner of the internet, the sky was supposed to part, trumpets were to sound, and the faithful were to be whisked away, leaving the rest of us behind with their empty cars idling on the freeway. Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram were full of tearful goodbyes and final preparations for glory.

For the most part, I rolled my eyes. I had the same thought many of us probably had: “Don’t you guys read your own rulebook? Matthew 24:36. ‘But about that day or hour no one knows…'”

If I’m being completely honest though, there’s been a little piece of me that’s been on edge all day.

Jumpy.

Anxious.

Because there’s still a little kid version of me in the recesses of my brain, wearing her best red and white polka dot dress with white ruffle socks and black patent-leather Mary Janes. She’s sitting in a hard wooden pew, hearing how the wicked will be left behind, and her one, all-consuming thought is, “What if I’m one of them?”

I grew up on a steady diet of hellfire and brimstone.

From the moment I could comprehend language, I was terrified of “the end of days.”

The idea that I had to be constantly vigilant, constantly good enough, to get sucked up into heaven and not left to endure the Tribulation was an exhausting, ever-present fear.

When the first Gulf War started, I remember watching live news coverage as Patriot missiles lit up the night sky over Iraq. I hid in my closet, heart pounding, convinced this was it. This was the Battle of Armageddon, and I was not ready.

Just when I thought my anxiety about the Book of Revelation couldn’t get worse, the Left Behind series was published. Let’s call them what they are: B-rated horror novels for Christians. As a fifteen-year-old, I devoured them, and they made my blood run cold. This wasn’t fiction to me; it was a terrifyingly plausible narrative that validated every fear I’d heard from the pulpit. It was an anxiety-attack-inducing preview of my own future.

I developed a condition I can only call “rapture panic.”

It flared up whenever people weren’t where they were supposed to be, or when I arrived somewhere and found it empty. More than once, I came home from school to a silent, empty house. The anxiety would rise in my stomach—a hot-cold tingling that started in my core and flooded out to my fingers and toes and the crown of my head. I was sure it had finally happened, and I had been found wanting.

The worst was one summer at church camp.

Knowing my fear, some of my fellow staffers decided to play a prank on me.

I walked into the staff house and found a scene of curated chaos. A pot of water was still boiling on the stove, an open box of spaghetti spilled across a pile of clothes and shoes on the floor. More empty outfits were strewn around the room, lying on couches in front of a blaring TV.

I screamed.

It was a raw, guttural sound of pure terror.

The panic attack was immediate and overwhelming.

My “friends” jumped out to yell “Surprise!” but I was too far gone to even register them. I was just standing there hyperventilating, sobbing, and screaming. My reaction scared them so badly that they had to get the camp director.

I was a living testament to the real-world trauma rapture theology could inflict.

I am a lot older now.

I’ve developed both a healthy relationship with a therapist and a healthy disdain for fire and brimstone sermons.

My rapture anxiety has mostly gone the way of my Care Bears and Caboodles—into the realm of childhood nostalgia.

Mostly.

Every once in a while, it sneaks back up and pokes me in the spine.

And today was one of those days.

So, here we are.

It’s 2:53 on Tuesday afternoon.

I’ve checked, and we’re all still here.

The apocalypse has apparently been postponed pending further review.

If you, like me, felt a little flicker of that old panic today—a tightness in your chest, a quick check to make sure your loved ones were still around—I want you to hear this: you are not alone. And that feeling is not a theological or mental failing; it’s a trauma response. It’s the annoying ghost of a lesson taught with fear instead of love.

Here’s the reality of Rapture Theology: trying to frighten people into heaven is a spiritual failure.

It is a tactic of control, not of liberation.

Any faith, any spirituality, any worldview worth its salt should build us up, connect us to one another, and inspire us with love, wonder, and compassion—not threaten us with abandonment and damnation. It should comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable, yes…and what it shouldn’t do is traumatize young children sitting there in their Sunday best, believing what their trusted grown-ups tell them.

So, for anyone who needed to hear it today: you are good enough to be raptured, if that’s even a thing.

You were always good enough.

Your worth is not measured by your ability to escape this beautiful, messy, complicated world.

It’s measured by how you choose to live in it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go wash and dry a sink full of dishes I really thought I was going to get out of doing.

And to everyone who said their tearful goodbyes on TikTok yesterday: see you at Target.

Awkward.