I Am Not Waiting For Armageddon

I want to make this perfectly clear: I am a “prepper.” I had to say it, just in case there was any question!

I have been into emergency preparedness for over 30 years now. I initially learned about preparedness through the church to which I used to belong. They have an entire program designed to teach their membership all about having their families prepared for one full year – the principles I was taught said we were preparing for basically, “Armageddon.” Yet even then, I questioned that part of preparedness. Prepping made sense – my parents had food set aside, my grandparents, and I even recall my great grandparents having a pantry filled full of foods. Yet I recall their reasoning being, “For a rainy day.”

So, I am not waiting for Armageddon. Period. Why? Because I have learned over the years that being an “Armageddonist” when it comes to prepping is not the right way to approach the subject. I tend to be someone who believes in preparedness as an everyday thing. Being a prepper, to me, means that I will be ready for what comes my way.

It is a multi-tasking mission for my – I want long term storage for the “what if’s” of life that may come down the road in the future, but I also want a pantry-full and a freezer packed for the rainy days. Rainy days have come, you know.

Through my years of adulting, I have had to rely on food storage a number of times. Imagine for a moment, if you were one of those families who in recent weeks, was hit by a government shut-down. If you had a savings and food storage, AND your family was used to eating that food storage, you would not be fretting the shut-down as much as other families are. You could help some of your local families who also might be struggling.

Imagine being able to do unto others as the Bible says (Luke 6:31). Imagine being able to take care of other families – as is said in 1 John 3:17, “But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?”

Taking care of those in need might mean stretching out into your neighborhood or community and helping someone you see is in need. Imagine being able to take care of your family or another family at a time when one spouse or the other loses their job, is laid off, or forced to take a pay cut?

With food storage set aside, there would be much less to worry about, wouldn’t there? I have had moments like this in my years of adulting. When times were hard, and we needed to rely on what we had stored. THESE are reasons why I am not an Armageddon Prepper.

If you read our recent blog about the ice storm, we were trapped, and had it not been for our prepper mentality and a blessed impression upon Jim, we could have lost a lot of our cold foods. But we didn’t. We followed his inspiration as a Biblical Prepper, packed ice into pots and pans, and after almost 4 days without power we only lost a couple of bags of veggies.

Sort of like the mailman’s old motto, I want our home to be ready for rain, snow, sleet, and hail, but also for wind storms and ice storms.  My hope is that we will be prepared for whatever the future hold: a trucker strike, job loss, lean times, that moment when a neighbor needs help, or any other emergency.

I will also say that having this mindset of being an everyday prepper has helped tremendously in many areas. Such as, knowing which foods are tasty, which are not. Which are easiest to prepare, and which will require excess water storage to be added to our plan. We know we need more water filters than anticipated, and more canning jars to put things up from the garden.

Having a “living” and rotating storage has helped us to discover another principle which I will write about soon, too: rationing early!

We know what foods we will store and what NOT to store ever again. Many of the pre-packaged meal type foods, for example, we did not like. After having lived on them for several months, we vowed to never buy those again! (You will have to read our upcoming review article on that one!). We learned there are certain freeze-dried foods that we will only open during dry season, and which will need to be eaten right away to prevent them absorbing too much moisture from humidity!

If I could give any new prepper advice, it would be: Don’t be an Armageddon prepper. Be a living, eating, rotating prepper. LIVE on what you store, and STORE what you live on.
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Blessings, Judith