Fear: Bugs

Day 23 (I don’t know how that happened either) started off pretty good. Mom and I went shopping for Father’s Day stuff for my Dad. We shopped, we ate, and we shopped some more. Then we came home and some flying thing was in my room on the ceiling. No I don’t know what it was but it was flew, was between 1in and 2in long, and didn’t make any noise. At first I was calm. I thought to myself “It’s on the ceiling. I can kill it with a fly swatter so I don’t have to get that close to it.” But we don’t have one anymore. I went back to my room determined to kill it with my shoe. It had other plans though and had flown to the other side of the room. I became a little panicked but I just said to myself, “It’s ok, even though I hate using it, I’ll just get the flying bug spray and kill it that way.” Guess what? Yep, I was wrong again. It left the wall I saw it on and disappeared because remember: It makes no noise.

So now the panic had fully set in. I know most people don’t like bugs but I’m terrified of them. I have gotten better over the years though. At least now I try to kill them, before I just ran. Waking up with roaches all over will do that to a person. Especially when the rest of that same summer everything from flies to bees tried to crawl in your ears. So yes I lost it a bit. Mom came and helped me burn peppermint oil and gave me some fresh basil from her garden to hang in my room (apparently bugs hate both). After standing there a bit Mom says she doesn’t see anything so it must be gone. ….yeah that logic doesn’t sit well with me. I was so shaken by the idea of this thing being somewhere in my room, I couldn’t even pray properly. It came out as a jumbling mess.

I decided standing there constantly scanning my room for the bug all panicked was a bad idea. I went into my parents' room to look over some info my Mom wanted me to check out and to sit down. The long day out really wore on me. I had planned to take a nap but then the bug happened. I looked at her stuff then just kind of sat there. The she told me I was being ridiculous and I should go back in my room or just take a nap in theirs. Fun fact: Telling someone that they are being ridiculous or shouldn’t be afraid does not help the person who’s afraid. Especially when we’ve already admitted we shouldn’t be afraid. I mean I know it is a bit silly to be afraid of something smaller, weaker than and not as smart as I am. However that doesn’t stop me from being afraid. Clearly I was still very afraid. I mean if logic could dispel fear most of us would be far braver and more productive than we actually are.

Focusing on something else helped calm me down a bit. So I decided to take a nap in my parents’ room. While lying there I realized that while over the years I did make more efforts to not be so afraid, I never dealt with the traumas that caused the fear in the first place. So for the first time ever, I prayed and asked God to help me to not be afraid. I know I know, you’re probably like how could you have not prayed that before? Well normally when I’m in a scary bug situation I ask God for help and the strength to get through the ordeal. I don’t think it ever crossed my mind to ask God to fix the root of the problem. This time I did.

But then as I laid there I didn’t feel right. I mean I just asked God to help me not be afraid while staying in a different room. So what did I do? I went to my room of course. I was still scared but I can’t ask for change and not change my behavior. That’s just insane. No seriously, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results,” supposedly said by Albert Einstein. Regardless of who said it, it’s true. We can’t constantly ask God to help us change and not step out on faith by taking action.

When I got in my bed I was still a bit freaked so I started repeating positive, scripture based things to myself. Then after a mental face palm, I pulled out my phone to look up actual scriptures to read and recite. At first I typed in “scriptures on faith” since people always say fear is the opposite of faith. That didn’t work that well for me so I typed in “scriptures for when I am afraid.” Those were the scriptures I needed. Biblestudytools.com and Google had come through for me again.

Have I even mentioned my love and appreciation for the Google search engine? I’m very grateful to God for its creation. Seriously you can speak whole verses into the mic part to find their location to look up in a paper Bible or share with another person. Plus it totally saved me on Day 9 when I slammed my thumb in the car door. After I tried a home remedy, I literally said, “I slammed my thumb in the car door,” and several helpful sites showed up with proper treatments (side note: Epson salt in hot water DOES NOT help the way ever person who saw my thumb that day suggested it would).

Anyway, I fell asleep while reciting scripture and had a pleasant, restful nap. So what was the point of this post? The point was to share the experience and thank God for showing me a better way as well as helping me to take a step closer to a fearless lifestyle. He’s been doing these kind of things in my life for a while now. However now that my mind isn’t so clouded with restlessness, busyness, and poor decisions I can see it better. Now this was just one thing. I say one thing because if I had an autobiography it would be titled Fear: The Former Story of My Life because most of my life has been defined by fear. It is with nervousness and excitement that I look forward to a life unafraid. A life I could never have on my own.

So expect more fear posts and other new things,

Be joyous and thrive