Back to the present after the ‘End’ fails to come

So what happens when your family has put everything into the belief that the world was going to end but instead life goes on? See Harold Camping, May 21, 2011.

The New York Times had an interesting exploration of how the end-is-nigh beliefs were affecting families. Here’s what was going on before May 21 for the Haddad family:

The Haddad children of Middletown, Md., have a lot on their minds: school projects, SATs, weekend parties. And parents who believe the earth will begin to self-destruct on Saturday.

The three teenagers have been struggling to make sense of their shifting world, which started changing nearly two years ago when their mother, Abby Haddad Carson, left her job as a nurse to “sound the trumpet” on mission trips with her husband, Robert, handing out tracts. They stopped working on their house and saving for college.

But what now? Now that the end has not come as Harold Camping proclaimed it would. (You have to wonder what the Haddads did after Y2K.) Do they return to normal life or do they wait to see if the end actually comes in October, per Camping’s mulligan?

Time will tell. When it does, I’d like to read that story.