I was a preteen during the Y2K era. Those who recall wondering if computers could count to 2000 may also remember that heyday of jelly sandals, The Phantom Menace, and “I Want It That Way.” The tween years are a weird time of life for everyone; for me, it was compounded by the emergence of an anxiety disorder. With the supermarket rags constantly brandishing headlines about the end of the world during those summer vacations when I was old enough to worry but too young to work, my OCD latched onto ruminating compulsively about a few things: nuclear weapons (thanks, The Iron Giant), tornados (illogical for someone living in Central Jersey [it does exist!], but not impossible), and – after reading the Book of Revelation at perhaps too tender of an age – the apocalypse, which felt to me immediate in its inevitability.

I talked to my priest. I talked to my mom. I talked to my dad, who – patiently, in his office above the garage, as I stood there while he was supposed to be returning phone calls and doing paperwork after a long day of tuning pianos – pointed me toward that one verse of scripture that should tell a young, anxious daughter of God everything she really needs to take to heart.

Eventually I turned 15 and started working. “Better” is a funny word, but I haven’t had a summer since that was chiefly defined by anxiety – although sometimes I can still sense that feeling of dread creeping in. There have been busy summers, lonely aimless summers, tragic-in-different-ways summers, destructive summers, working summers. But post-2020, two decades after the Y2K-disaster-that-wasn’t, talk of the end of the world has seemed to resurge. The pandemic has petered out, but that vague sense of “changing times” hangs on.

The thing is, the Book of Revelation is now more of a comfort to me than a source of anxiety. With life has come suffering and with suffering experience, and it seems clearer to me now that all human beings are always living out their personal end times, which will culminate at the moment of death. And maybe part of it is that I feel that the world for me – in a way – has already ended, because my husband and I will never have children.

We don’t talk about it much – even at Springs in the Desert – but infertility (in different ways, in different seasons) can change one’s perception of and ideas around death. It’s not that I no longer care about the world I’ll leave behind, but a door has closed on a physical part of my husband and me living on after we’re gone. Like the desire to see ourselves in our children, I think that the desire to pass on our biological heritage is just that – biological. This facet of infertility, which contributes to the deep-rooted pain of this cross, is not vain or silly or something that should just be disregarded. We ourselves have come into being through generations and generations of human relationships that span thousands of years – since the beginning of time. The fact that my husband and I will bring no next generation into the world together – ever – is deeply sad. Even if we adopted and were able to pass on our love and our gifts, that wouldn’t negate or replace what we have lost. It’s okay to acknowledge that we simply won’t live on in this way without mentally trying to “fix” that “problem.”

A deep experience of suffering and the passing of time can also begin to give us a healthier perspective on death. I don’t want to die and am not particularly looking forward to death itself, but sometimes I notice in my heart a longing to go home. I long to see the face of God. I long for His heavenly peace. I long for the deep still waters. And although the thought of eternity to me is still incomprehensible and terrifying, just as it was when I was young, I long for that life without end.

I don’t know if these are the end times – indeed, none of us do. We may think we see signs in pandemics, in politics, in St. Paul Outside the Walls. But what’s more important as we work out our salvation during our time here on Earth is that, to paraphrase St. Thérèse, this world is our ship and not our home. Like our consecrated religious who, taking vows of chastity, trust the fruitfulness of their lives entirely to God and live as a sign of the Kingdom, I hope to live out my marital vocation in a manner worthy to also be a sign of hope for the life to come, dressed in my Jersey girl uniform: in black, like for a funeral.

“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away. And he that sat on the throne, said: Behold, I make all things new.” (Rev 21:4–5 DRA)

Cassandra Taylor is the Communications Manager for Springs in the Desert. She has been married to her husband Michael for almost nine years. When she’s not working, she is trying to keep their two-year-old Golden Retriever, Tom Bombadil, under some semblance of control. Cassandra also loves reading Austen and the Brontës, and she aspires to be an expert on the Victorian novel – if only she didn’t have such a hard time with Dickens!