So Afraid

I don't have to go to work or school or anything tomorrow because it's president's day. Though I am a good American who can appreciate whatever unique achievement there is to celebrate about each individual historic president, there's a part of me that wonders a bit why the somewhat ambiguous holiday of "president's day" warrants a national closure of everything from banks to schools and law firms on a somewhat arbitrarily placed day in mid February. Don't get me wrong, I love a three day weekend for any reason, so I'm not dwelling on the ambiguity of tomorrow for more than a couple of minutes, but am I supposed to like take a moment of silence for presidential appreciation tomorrow? Who knows, I probably won't, but it's kind of a nice thought...

Before you stop reading, I'm aware that this rambling first paragraph back from my blogging hiatus has surely made you wonder if I've lost my "way with words," let me explain myself a bit. I wrote the other day that I have been avoiding dealing with the mess of thoughts and questions and feelings going on in my little world and that a byproduct of my life-avoidance tactic has been not writing; something I want to change. Tonight I spent some good quality time with a family that has come to mean almost as much to me as my own family, eating dinner, drinking wine, laughing, holding the baby, and playing with the bigger-every-day kids. I got home around 10:45 and despite the fact that I've already had an incredibly relaxing weekend and have a long day of nothing but relaxation and the Bachelor ahead of me tomorrow, I was perfectly content to get ready for bed and hit the hay early. I got ready for bed, grabbed a book, lit a candle, and settled in knowing I'd probably not read more than a page because I'd likely be asleep in less than ten minutes. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw what I believe was probably satan himself in the form of a big black spider creeping along the bottom of my bed. MY BED. Trying not to wake my roommates but irrationally terrified of the menacing creature I stood up (on the mattress) flung all of the blankets in the air and silently screamed and prayed that he would disappear. I didn't see where he went, and haven't seen him since, but the experience was quite the adrenaline rush.

Needless to say I am now wide awake unable to turn off the lights or do much of anything, let alone sleep, knowing that he's lurking around here somewhere ready to crawl all over my face, inject me with poison, God knows what, the second I let down my guard and try to sleep. So, of course, I played a couple of rounds of Word Twist then thought to myself..."Self, you're avoiding. Why don't you take this spider-induced insomnia as an opportunity to write on your blog again." So here I am. And the first thing I thought of as I attempted to distract myself was president's day. But then that damned spider creeped back into my consciousness again. And I started to think about how genuinely scared I was, followed immediately by how dumb it is to be so scared, which led, then, to how scared I sometimes feel in life right now.

But the things I'm scared of never cease to amaze me. I'm a grown woman; independent, confident, capable. And even now, I sit perched on my bed this president's day eve on lookout for a spider? Jumping a little bit each time the stormy wind knocks the shutter against the window outside my room? And these things, I know, are little things. Easy things to be startled by, name, and then rationalize and get over relatively quickly. It's the other stuff. The big fat lose sleep at night take your breath away and cause you to cry without warning stuff that I'm afraid of that I really wish I could apply logic or even words to as well. Ideally I'd then be able to move forward equally unscathed. But this other stuff is so much more real. It's future stuff. It's job stuff and money stuff. Relationship stuff, love stuff, identity and how-I-do-life stuff that is scarier than any spider crawling across the foot of my bed. But it's also only masquerading as scary stuff. It's only scary because it's uncertain, unknown, undecided, untouchable. But these things I'm so afraid of are actually exciting things and good things and even though I can't touch them, God is holding every bit of my future firmly in His capable hands. It's the trusting thing that maybe I'm most scared of.

So here it is in this often-scary place that I will wait. I will wait and practice trusting, practice patience, and practice fearlessness. Starting with the small, more manageable things, I suppose, like going to sleep knowing that there is a big nasty spider on the loose and working my way up to handling the other, bigger stuff a little more gracefully.