Fear

I'm a wimp and I'm not afraid to admit it.  I'm afraid of a lot of things, but lately my biggest fear is the camel cricket, or as they are known in our household "spider crickets".  They are a perfectly harmless insect except that they might cause my death due to a heart attack.  They sincerely embody all that I fear about bugs: rather large, looks like a spider, ugly, and-the greatest offense-they can jump really high, really far, and really fast.  I live in mortal fear that one of these bugs might JUMP on ME.  It is completely irrational and I am not proud of it, but my heart starts racing, I break into a cold sweat, and my blood pressure goes through the roof when I see one of these little beasts roaming around my otherwise peaceful home.  I have nightmares about these things.  And up until a few weeks ago, my dear, patient husband had killed them all for me. 

Now they started making their appearance when Spencer is gone.  I am faced with a dilemma: confront my greatest fear and kill it, with the risk that it might jump on me, or hide on my bed.  I think you can guess what I have to do. However, I can't get close to them, so I through shoes from about two feet away until I get a hit.  Sometimes, it takes a few tries.

And yet with all my confrontations, they still strike fear into my poor, failing heart.  Spencer tries to tell me how much progress I've made in taking them on, but I still just want them to just cease to exist. 

And then I realized the other night (while I was panicking about getting past a spider cricket that was not so conveniently parked in front of my front door) that this is exactly how I view all of my fears.  I just want them to go away instead of facing them.  Sure it would be much easier if everything I was afraid of would disappear, but I'm fairly certain that won't happen. Plus, I'm the mama and mama's aren't supposed to be afraid of anything, so I need to step it up.  Then I thought about a scripture, and after a little searching, I found it: "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." (2 Timothy 1:7).  I realized that the Lord doesn't want me to be afraid and He can help me get over my fears, even if they are as silly as spider crickets.

Now, I know this will not get me over my fear right now, I'm pretty sure I might need some hypnotherapy to do that, but at least it can help me put things in perspective.  Just maybe I can show my son what a tough mama he has one day.

P.S. I was going to post a picture, but I was getting too freaked out looking at the page of crickets staring at me.  Google "camel cricket" and see what you get. Blah. Instead, I'll post a cute picture of Liam, because it's much more pleasant to look at.