Jen and the Earthquake - A Lesson In Trusting

I woke to the October morning sunlight filtering through the orange tree outside my front bedroom window and wanted to roll over and go back to sleep. 

But the now familiar early morning queasiness began to flutter deep in the pit of my stomach.


Maybe if I didn’t move I could convince it I’d not really awakened. I lay very still, but could not avoid what I knew would come.


I didn’t feel sick enough to wretch. Just enough so that I knew I would not be able to rest until I did.


Why couldn’t this pregnancy be like my first. With my Nickle, I was never sick a single day. No morning sickness. No stretch marks. No hemorrhoids. Nothing. In fact I’d felt the healthiest I’d ever been in my life.

When I was pregnant the second time, with Jen, I’d been sick as a dog from just about the moment of conception. 

When I began throwing up a week before my first missed period, I thought it must’ve been the something I’d eaten the night before.


Or maybe it was the 800 mg of Tylenol they’d given me the week before when I crashed the motorcycle on the winding drive down into camp.

I had told the summer camp director I felt much more comfortable driving my car up the long, switchback drive to the highway above to pick up the mail. But he insisted that insurance would not cover me if I drove my own vehicle.


So each day that summer, I’d piled the mail bags containing hundreds of letters and dozens of care packages onto the back of the motorcycle they insisted I ride, and headed back down the steep switchbacks.


Keeping the packages balanced while going fast enough to keep my balance posed quite a challenge as I maneuvered down the steep switchbacks. Then there were so many sandy spots on the pavement where they’d spread the sand to melt snow the winter before. I found it virtually impossible to avoid them.

Rounding the corner at the stables that first Tuesday in July, I was startled as a coyote ran down the bank and across the road right in my path. My reaction time far outraced rational reasoning.

Instinctively, I hit the brakes and tried to steer around him, but skidded on a patch of sand. The load on back shifted, and I felt the back wheel slipping out from under me as it skidded on the sandy road in slow motion. But I could do nothing to prevent it, and down I went.

The motorcycle’s momentum caused it to slide out from under me as my right knee hit first, then my right elbow and both hands.


I picked myself up and inspected the road rash and other damage.

I frowned at the tear across the right knee of my brand new jeans and tried to dust the dirt from my right elbow and the heels of both hands which were already beginning to bleed.


By the time I walked the bike down the rest of the way to headquarters, blood had run down my leg and pooled in my shoe. 

Apparently I’d ripped more than just my new jeans!  

When I pulled the pant leg all the way up, I could see the knee was torn wide open and would need stitches.

A trip down the mountain to the Urgent Care Clinic resulted in x-rays, several stitches to the knee, and a prescription for large-dose Tylenol. So it took me a week to realize I was pregnant and not just reacting to the Tylenol.


By the time the 5th month of my third pregnancy had arrived, I knew that early morning queasiness the moment I woke up. 

I forced myself to crawl out of bed and tiptoe toward the bathroom, hoping not to hit a squeaky floorboard and wake the babies.


Mission accomplished, I peeked into the kids’ room before heading back to bed. Three-year-old Nick and eighteen-month-old Jen slumbered soundly. 

Climbing back into bed, I looked at the clock. 7:25.

I could buy another hour’s sleep if my luck held.

Lacking a bedside table, I set my glass of water on the air conditioner above my headboard and snuggled back into bed, falling asleep almost as soon as I pulled the covers up.




When the rumbling began, icy cold water instantly doused me before I could even respond to the ever familiar sounds of a California earthquake.

Adrenalin flooded my body with terror in a heartbeat. 

I leapt from the bed, soaking wet, and ran toward the kids’ room just fifteen feet down the short hallway. All I could think about was reaching the kids and pulling them under me to prevent them from any falling furniture or crumbling structures.


In my second stride I recognized this to be the strongest quake I’d experienced yet. 

I bounced from wall to wall as I tried to run in a straight line to reach their room. 

In that instant, I felt like a pinball out of control as the hallway heaved and buckled and swayed beneath my racing feet.


The heaving jolts stopped as quickly as they’d started and had subsided by the time I reached the end of the short hallway. As I ran into the room, I noticed that Nick, true to form, had slept soundly through the whole jarring roller coaster ride.


Quickly I turned to Jen, certain that she’d be wailing uncontrollably in terror any minute. 

But much to my surprise, there she stood, holding onto the railing of her crib, smiling from ear to ear.

“Mo’!” she said emphatically. “Mo!’!”


Not only had the thunderous earthquake not frightened her; she boldly demanded another go ‘round!  (That should have been an indication to me as to the wild, adventurous personality she would develop...)


Before I could do anything, a second wave hit and Jen bounced up and down squealing with delight until I snatched her up, mid-ride, startling her into tears as she picked up on my anxiety.


I grabbed Nick and ran to the doorway to brace myself until the rocking and rolling subsided. 

Then we exited the front door and stood in the front yard where nothing could fall on us. 

I ran next door to help my neighbor and her three young children out of their house, turned off the gas main and then checked on old Mr. Hamm across the street.


The neighbor’s chimney had buckled and crashed to the ground just inches from the window above my bed.

A quick inspection later on inside our house showed the contents of our medicine cabinet had been emptied into the bathroom sink basin. 

All of the plates and glasses had been rattled out of the kitchen cupboards and onto the counter and floor. But at least no one had been hurt.


In the days, weeks and even months afterwards, we had aftershocks. One three days after the earthquake was almost as strong as the first.

I came close to a nervous breakdown in those weeks of anticipating and dreading another earthquake and the fear of not being able to protect not just my two precious babies but my unborn child as well. 

I slept with one eye open, my nerves on edge.

The Whittier Narrows earthquake as it came to be called was initially reported as a 6.0 and later downgraded to a 5.9. 

It is estimated that the quake was responsible for $358, 000,000 dollars in damages. Three people were killed as a direct result of the quake, with 5 other deaths attributed indirectly to it. 

So I had cause to fear.


When the kids were growing up, the story of Jen and the earthquake was always a favorite of theirs and had to be retold at all family gatherings. 

I have to smile at the message. Where there is innocence, there is no fear.


I think of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the “apple.”




And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 2:8-10

Growing up, I always had the pictured Eve as a sort of Snow White eating the poisoned apple. But eating the apple didn’t kill Eve. The tree’s fruit was not poisonous.


But, because God is a fair and just God, He planted the tree so that humanity had a choice. He planted a tree that was not of itself evil, but was a tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil.

In eating from that tree, they CHOSE to know about evil. 

They CHOSE to remove that filter, so to speak, that shaded them from evil.


Little Jen had no knowledge of evil at the tender age of 18 months. 

So the rumbling and heaving of the house in the dawn hours gave her no fear. 

She looked at it as joy because she knew nothing of dead people and structural damage or loss. All she’d known so far in her little life was love and happiness.


When Satan brought evil into the universe, he opened the door to that which follows evil – fear. We can’t unring that bell. Sin and evil are here to stay. But we can do our part to avoid it by guarding our minds and our character and avoiding that which is not of God. Those things that draw us away from Him. For each of us, something different.


But if we look to Him, He will shelter us from evil, even as he tried to do for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.




Liz Carson Rosas
9 September 2009

The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day. But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble.

                                                                      Proverbs 4:18 & 19





God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.

                                                                                  Psalms 46:1-3







So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand

                                                                                Isaiah 41:9-11







And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

                                                                              Matthew 18:3