Free Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds

twilight to daybreak if we felt like it, studying scripture and singing songs and talking about everyday situations we faced that the adults didn’t have to.
    David and Laura and Everett and Wanda and Ben Harback and some others who weren’t yet shackled with children of their own would lead us in workshops about how to deal with the children on the bus who made fun of us, about how to know when we should tell our elders about unholy books we might be reading in school. We did fun things—like building a bonfire and destroying fashion magazines that somebody brought in from town just for the occasion.
    We had boiled peanuts and popcorn. We could talk about anything there.
    But that all happened later, after Grandpa Herman had given his sermon.
    Each time, Grandpa Herman would come in early. We’d all eat supper together, and then he’d lecture us while we sat at the wooden tables in front of him. Then he’d tell us to put our heads on the table, with every head bowed and every eye closed.
    Obediently, we’d follow his instructions.
    Then he’d ask us to raise our hands if we wanted to go to Hell. He’d say, “Unless you’ve been saved and baptized in the precious blood of Jesus, each and every one of you will be going to Hell.”
    And then he’d tell us stories about how Jesus was coming back, any day, probably within the next five years, and that we needed to be ready to greet him. He said that unless we’d been baptized, when the rapture happened, we’d be left behind. We’d wake up one day and call out “good morning” to our parents and hear no reply. We’d look for them only to find their clothes left in the bed.
    He said that we’d run out of food. That big bugs would chase us around and sting us with their tails, and that though we might be sickened unto death, we could not die.
    He said we’d turn on the faucet in the bathroom and find only blood running out and would have nothing to drink.
    He said evil multitudes would come unto us and cut off our limbs, and that we wouldn’t die. We’d sit there, with no legs to run with, and be stung and stung again by the beasts.
    And then he’d say, “But you don’t have to be left behind. You can go straight to Heaven with all of God’s special children if you’ll only open your hearts to Jesus, ask him for forgiveness and welcome him into your hearts.”
    And then he’d tell us to raise our hands again if we feared going to Hell. Whoever raised their hand would be taken away to the church where Grandpa Herman would lead them to salvation.
    It happened the same way each time. The youngest children invited to the youth retreats would get saved right away. I’d raised my hand years earlier, but each time Grandpa Herman gave his after-the-rapture speech, I found it hard to catch my breath, hard to focus on God’s love and not God’s meanness and spite. I thought that really I wasn’t saved at all.
    Grandpa Herman said that when you were truly saved, you felt like you could fly. But I never felt that way. Not about Jesus.
    And each time I knew that I must not really be saved, that I must not have opened my heart to him. I tried to figure out how you go about opening your heart. I tried not to think about being left behind, but in the nights, I kept slipping out of bed, checking the faucet to make sure it wasn’t bleeding.
    On that occasion, it was John who went away with Grandpa Herman and came back testifying. We listened to Grandpa Herman’s words coming out of John’s eight-year-old mouth, and it made me feel sick all over.
    But then we broke into groups, and my group had just me and James and Pammy and Lorrie Evens and Joshua Langston, both older cousins who lived on the other side of the compound. David and Laura were our leaders and they talked to us about “Teenage Temptations,” about how at our age, we might be tempted to put on lipstick at school or smart-mouth a teacher in hopes of winning the affections of a boy or girl in our class.