I slap down the newspaper. Bad news! Wars, economic downturns, crime. What will become of us?
It seems like a poor time for my husband to quit a secure job and start a daring, new business venture. He keeps saying, "It will take time. We can make it."
But the knot in my stomach tightens. My tears and temper quicken. In the back of my mind I see us losing everything. I feel helpless in the path of something dark, threatening, and closing in.
Finally, I take time to analyze my feelings. When have I felt such a fear before? My mind goes back to the year I was four ...
That year, my father graduated from college and took his first pastorate. We moved into the little parsonage. A week later, the house burned to the ground in the middle of the night. Mother and Daddy barely escaped in their nightclothes. Mother ran for us girls in the back bedroom. She found me sitting upright in the bed, my eyes wide. She picked up my sleeping little sister and carried her, leading me out by the hand.
I will forever remember walking through that smoke-filled living room, in the blackness of night, clutching Mother's hand. Soon after we got outside, the entire living room and front door burst into flames. There followed a cacophony of sirens, men yelling instructions, and the three of us huddled, crying in the car. Strangers down the street took us in for the rest of the night. In the morning, I had no clothes or toys of my own.
Throughout the next year, I played around the yard, watching Daddy and the church men build a sanctuary on the burn site. After a year, Daddy said it was time to move again. I cried all night before we moved. When Daddy came in to comfort me, I could not tell him what was wrong. I didn't know how to say that I was afraid of a big blackness; that I felt terribly helpless; that some horrible, consuming thing must be connected with moving to a new place.
We moved, though. No tragedy occurred in the new house, and soon the time came to move again.
This time, our parents left us behind while they moved the furniture to the next town. My sister and I spent the night with a church family.
At night I lay wide-eyed in a strange bed. In the darkness, unfamiliar objects in the room took on threatening forms. I almost smelled smoke. I hardly dared go to sleep. When sleep did come, it catapulted me into a nightmare world of flashing colors and throbbing shapes. Oh, why had Mother gone? Why wasn't she here to save me?
Mother and Daddy did return the next day. They took us to our new house. We lived there a week, a month, a year. No dark catastrophe occurred. Days eased into peaceful hours: chasing butterflies in the vacant lot, playing in the sprinklers on the lawn, and skating up and down the sidewalk.
But nights tormented me. My bedroom was on the opposite side of the house from my parents' and sister's rooms. Next to mine was a door to outside. I felt alone in a big room of a creaky house.
One summer night, eerie noises awakend me. Unearthly sounds wafted on the night air. These non-human voices seemed to surround me, undulating from deep tones to shrill pitches. Then I thought I heard them sing, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" They must be angels! Oh, what is happening? Have Daddy and Mother and my sister gone to heaven and left me here?
Learning the next day that those weird sounds came from cats (in which our neighborhood abounded) felled a blow to my imagination's ego. But it did not allay my fears — or stop my imagination. Subsequent nights, I was sure I heard the back door open and close and the floor boards creak under footsteps. Moreover, without a doubt, a snake or a bear lurked under my bed. I could not even call out to my parents because then I would be identifying my location to an intruder.
This all sounds silly now that I'm grown. But fears still haunt me. The things I read in the newspaper and hear on the newscast feed my imagination. I still feel at times alone and cut off from help. All I can "see" is darkness, threatening and hot and closing in.
About the time I heard the cats, when I was eight or nine, my parents gave me a Bible. It was white, zippered, with my name imprinted on the front. How proud I was of that special book! From my parents I had already been taught and had "caught" the love of reading. They told me this was the best Book of all because it was God's Word. He actually spoke to us through the Bible.
Daddy suggested I read the red words, the words of Jesus, and the Psalms and Proverbs. Each night before I went to sleep I read a few verses.
One night I lay reading, not wanting to turn off the light and face the darkness. My Bible opened to Proverbs 3:24. I read, "When thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid: yea thou shalt lie down, and thy sleep shall be sweet."
I read it again. God knows I'm afraid, I thought. At that moment I knew without a doubt that God himself was speaking to me.
He understood. He cared. He was there. He came to help even when I could not call out loud or explain my fear in words.
Something happened to me that night. I slept easily and peacefully. Never again was I so frantically fearful. There were times when a noice scared me. And I had recurring dreams in which I felt helpless. But never again did I feel that consuming, nameless, dread fear overwhelm me.
The next time we moved I looked forward to the new experiences. I began to look back at the fire as a miraculous time God brought us through.
Now, as an adult, I look back. I see what God did: He transformed my imagination. Vivid, real experiences, dark images, and wild imaginings fed my childish mind. At night my imagination took over and I expected something terrible.
Then a compassionate God revealed himself to a nine-year-old. He hung a new picture in my mind's eyes. This picture was so promising, real, and close that it covered all the other images on my mind's wall. This picture was so bright that it outshone the pictures of licking flames and smothering smoke, of strangers' staring faces and charred toys.
As I continued to read my Bible, little by little my mind collected more pictures. I saw myself as a lamb in Jesus' arms. I saw Him sending His angels to watch over me. I saw Him counting the hairs on my head. I saw Him taking me on His lap while all the adults waited. I saw Him pointing out the flowers and birds to me and patiently teaching me about His Father.
In my cluttered adult mind those simple pictures often get crowded out. When our business fails to produce needed income, when serious illness hits, when so many changes seem to be occurring at once in my life, what mental pictures do I see? Too often I dwell on wild imaginings. I smell smoke and see no way out. I see the house going up in flames. I see everything gone. I see a dark, uncertain future and feel like I have to face it alone.
Then I read a passage of Scripture. Or I hear a hymn sung. Or I look at the spring flowers and listen to the bird songs. Then, as I allow Him, the Jesus of my childhood transforms my imagination. I see Him standing before me, arms open, radiating such light that no darkness can threaten. I see no need to fear.
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Copyright © 1983, 2006, Catherine Lawton
Published in The Lookout and Standard
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