Fearless

I've always liked to think I'm fairly fearless.  I think it's time to face the truth.  I am afraid of many things. Most of my fears do not involve large, earthshaking events.  In fact, bigger things scare me less than small things.  Which makes no sense but neither do most of the things that make me shiver.

Spiders, for instance.  Give me a very large snake, of the non-poisonous variety, any day.  Spiders have far too many legs and they could be crawling on me without my knowing, moving about with their too many legs. Just writing about it makes an involuntary shudder run along my spine.  I regularly have my house fumigated, likely risking that all who enter here will glow in the dark.  But I rarely see a spider venture through and that's the way I like it.

Another thing that makes me weak in the knees is talking to people I've never met without a proper introduction from someone who knows them.  At our church we are encouraged to seek out visitors and welcome them.  After the initial "Hello!" I'm pretty much at a loss of what to say.  And I'm in mortal terror of saying something that will reveal that I'm in mortal terror.  I'd rather speak in front of a crowd, all of them total strangers, than to be stuck in a room with only one,

People who won't talk.  They scare me speechless.  Ask anyone who knows me; I talk a lot.  I mean, some of my friends probably think I never shut up.  But put me with someone quiet and I'm paralyzed into silence, frantically searching my cerebral cortex for things to say that will require more than a one-word answer.  I like having to wait for whoever I am talking to to take a breath so I can interject my own stream of verbalization while they in turn have to wait for me to breathe and so on and so on, back and forth.

Singing alone in public.  I tried it once at a choir rehearsal.  I couldn't breathe.  Neither could I sing.  End of any dreams in that direction.

Paper cuts. Give me a three-inch splinter to pull or an impressively bleeding wound to hold together - not a problem.  But those paper cuts you can't see that feel like hot needles every time you walk past a bottle of vinegar or a shaker of salt, those are frightening.

Mini-vans.  They are accidents waiting to happen.  Young mothers with four kids in car seats, two of them likely screaming and thus spurring mom to drive fast and furious to get where she's going, almost driving past her destination, then swerving in with no turn signals and no heed to traffic behind or oncoming.  Or she's trying to still the wails by reaching over the seat to hold a bottle in place, thereby restoring silence and possibly choking the child.

Offending my kids.  One of which drives a mini-van.  Fortunately my children are not the quiet type so there will be plenty of loud discussion with no one waiting for anyone to breathe.  Conflict resolution at its finest.

While I could make a much longer list my fear of boring people dictates restraint so I will wind down this blog with my fear of people finding out how afraid I am of so many silly things.

In church today I learned that unbelief or a lack of faith is a major cause of fear.  Funny, my son told me that the day after the election.  With great force and enthusiasm.  And he was right, as he often is.  I'd like to think it's my awesome child-rearing skills that have made him the wise person he is but unfortunately my fear of living in denial would force me to acknowledge that it's in spite of his upbringing, not because of it.

Back to the series of sermons we are hearing at church right now: " The Cure for the Common Life."  How much have I missed because of my irrational fears?  I mean, I can't go to Africa because there are really big spiders there.  I've probably missed meeting people who would have been life-long friends, because no one introduced us.  And some of those mini-vans out there are actually pretty cool, with all their sliding doors and leather seats and video players and sound systems.  But I can't own one because, well, what would people think???  The "what would people think" fear was handed down with great repetition from my very kind and sincerely well-meaning mother.  Fortunately my mini-van-driving daughter could care less what people think and I must admit her dexterity while sailing down the roadways is very impressive.  And she does use her blinker. Usually.

So now I have faced one of my fears.  Everyone who reads this will know I am not fearless.  It feels liberating.  Maybe I should get a pet spider.  Or maybe I should start with something small.  Like bear-hunting with a sling-shot.