Photo by Khashayar Kouchpeydeh on Unsplash
When she was in the hospital, only a few days before her death, my fierce, feisty, 89-and-a-half-year-old grandmother fixed her intense blue eyes on me and said the one thing I never thought she would say.
“Lori,” she said, “I never thought this would happen so soon!”
She was talking about death.
My mind was like one of those old-fashioned calculators that was overheating, trying all different ways to understand what she was saying to me. In the end, was she saying that she was 89 and a half years old and hadn’t figured out that she could die soon? Yup.
That’s exactly what she said.
Of course, the fact that we die was not a truth that my grandmother was wholly unaware of. This fact approached her through all the deaths she witnessed during the Great Depression and the Second World War. However, this knowledge seemed to approach her from the side, not head-on. Unfortunately, she suffered from anxiety in her long life and feared a lot of stuff. But she was too busy fearing other stuff to remember to fear everything!
And so, you’re probably afraid of the wrong things, too.
You cringe at home, cornered up against the wall, afraid. I know. I can see you.
Actually, I can’t see you, but we all kind of live that way.
Sometimes, it feels like a blanket of fear settles over us all. And this fear comforts us somehow, just like a blanket comforts us from the cold. The only problem is that as it comforts, it also eats away at our souls, destroying us.
Photo by Amelia Vu on Unsplash
I pondered how to avoid fear as I read the book The Night The Angels Came about missionary Chrissie Chapman, who chose to spend her life in war-torn Burundi instead of peaceful Britain.
One day, she had a really bad week.
It was a bad week in a way that our first-world minds can’t really wrap our heads around. For example, her child was kidnapped. Yup. Seriously. That same week, a grenade was accidentally thrown into their yard as civil war was fought outside their house, and a gunshot bent the frame of her bedroom window.
Then, she was held up at gunpoint for a bag of rice due (in part) to food scarcity.
I look downstairs at my freezer, which is full of food, and I can’t remember what’s in it. So, I have a hard time relating to food scarcity. What a privileged culture we live in, in so many ways.
And yet, I know precisely how author Chrissie Chapman feels because I’ve had bad weeks, too!
I’ve had a bad week where fear was like a blanket, wrapping itself around my neck and choking me, too.
For example, one day this summer there was a clear blue sky, and the birds were singing. I live in peaceful rural North America, where the deer that eat my tulips are the most irritating intruders. (Why? Why do they have to do that?)
And yet, as I looked around, my heart was a cancer full of fear, consuming me.
What about those things in the news that might happen? What about that stuff I read on social media that might occur? And the worst question is, What if I’m worried about the wrong things?
So, as illustrated in the paragraph above, I can exactly relate to Burundian author Chrissy Chapman and her fears!
I’m just like her because my (peaceful) world makes me feel afraid, too!
And so how do we throw off the blanket of suffocating fear?
Let’s talk about that next Tuesday in Part 2 of this post.
For now, let’s constantly ponder . . . (that thing we never think about, that we all pretend will never happen).
You’re welcome!
Good luck!
Shhh. . . but:
(You learn more at a funeral than at a feast)
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