I came, I saw, I smashed it into the rug!

Fear...it is a powerful thing. Most of the time the fear of doing something is more painful than actually doing it. Living in fear of something isn't living at all. It keeps you up at night, it keeps you from taking any risks, it can even keep you from having relationships or from ever experiencing the joy of living life free from fear.
Fears come in all shapes and sizes. We like to laugh at other people's fears, but when it comes to our own fears, our sense of humor tends to run dry. Some people laugh at the girl so afraid of home invasion that she ritualistically checks doors and windows and closets and under the bed before going to sleep every night, but those same people may be terrified of doing their income taxes. Which causes me to ask, which is a more rational fear...really. You may find fear of mice or roaches to be paltry and irrational, but tremble at the thought of universal health care and the end of capitalism. Fear is personal and not often rational.
Why do we fear things anyway? I guess that some fears keep people from making really bad choices that might get themselves killed or worse. Fear, to a certain extent, is just a survival instinct, a tool we use to help us stay alive. But I am not really talking about that kind of fear. No, I am talking about the fear that binds us and makes us a slave to it, that smothers us and holds us back from our potential. God has been teaching me a lot lately about this kind of fear. I have had to identify some of the fears that are keeping me bound and asking God to free me from them. Some of you have asked God to free you from some of your fears and you know where this story is going, but for the rest of you, I must warn you that when you ask God to free you from your fear, you better be ready for him to do it.
Since I was a small girl, I have feared one thing with such consistency and stamina that I really ought to qualify for some sort of award. I fear cockroaches. Not the little roaches that are about a cm long and crawl out of your drain at night. I mean, they are gross, but they are hardly terrifying. No, I fear the big ones, the tree roaches that love to invade the old Victorian houses in Galveston. The ones that live in the walls and come out at night when the lights are turned out, that do not respect the boundaries of door, nor bed cover, nor drawer. They can smell fear and vulnerability, and they feed off it. They lie in wait in your bath towels, they breed in your tennis shoes, they invade your bedchamber in hoards with a snick, click, snick sound, that chills to the bone.
To be honest, I know they cannot hurt me, not really. They may be impossible to kill and look like incarnated devils, but really quite harmless when compared to say...earthquakes, house fires, rabid wolves or vampires. But as with any home invader, their real power lies in the fact that there is nothing you can do to guarantee that they will not enter your home, you are completely vulnerable and helpless. Now, like with home invaders, you can have weapons of mass destruction handy to blast them into oblivion, but you may be caught unawares and unprepared.
One of the things I have been worried about in heading to Africa is the fact that cockroaches are just as prevalent there if not more so, than in Galveston where I grew up. How am I supposed to deal with that? Especially if I am living alone? So, even though I was pretty sure I wouldn't like his methods, I told God that I needed his help to conquer this fear. Maybe that was when he decided to send me to Galveston for three months. The first encounter came one night after my sisters had gone to bed. Natalie came tearing into the living room weeping hysterically and blathering unintelligibly. It was a roach near her bed in her room. Christopher could not be roused, so I decided I must deal with it. I steeled myself and rushed to her aid, only to find that Audra had already dealt a stunning blow the the offending insect. I tried to scoop it up with an envelope to dispose of it, and it seemed to revive a little, so I grabbed a shoe and clobbered it beyond revival. My hand was shaking with adrenaline as I sent it to it's watery grave.
The next training exercise came when my friend and I were at her apartment late at night. I went into the kitchen and flipped the switch. Two giant creepers were feasting on crumbs on the floor. We tried to poison them with Lysol spray, but one got away in the pantry, and the other escaped into the bedroom. Well, the bedroom invader was the size of a school eraser and I had no intention of sharing my sleeping quarters with it. We chased if from behind the dresser with a broom and worked together to trap and destroy it using a two pronged attack with dustpan and broom.
Then tonight, I came home to my friend's apartment, alone. I started to climb the stairs and there on the wall was another super-sized-creature-from-the-pit-of-hell! This time, I was all alone. I looked downstairs, praying that God would provide a weapon of ample reach and clout. Thank heaven...there was a mop. I grabbed the implement and headed up the stairs. I swung, and missed, but the creature underestimated my reaction time and didn't move quick enough to evade my next blow. This one struck it dead on and it fell to the stairs. I beat it into the carpet, but knew that it wasn't broken and might still revive. I dashed upstairs to get the broom and dustpan, only to find that our associate from the previous night, the pantry lurker, was carousing on my Weapon of Mass Destruction! I screamed a mighty war cry and slammed the door a couple times until he abandoned my WMD for safer regions further back in the pantry. I disposed of the first kill and went to address the lurker, only to find that once again it evaded my efforts to destroy it. I suppose I still have some residual fear issues I need to work out with that one later.
All in all, I am pretty darn proud of my accomplishments, as indicated by this rather lengthy epitaph in their honor. I suppose one of the hardest and most important steps to getting over any fear is deciding that you are going to have to face it in order to conquer it. This is even harder to do than actually facing it, for some reason. Fear is really only as strong as the fear itself, and adrenaline can be a very useful supplement to bravery.

Bits of Glass

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the sea. It can be unstable, powerful, destructive, constant, untamed and also likened in scripture to the voice of God. Maybe the awe we feel for the unfettered might of the ocean is a taste of the awe we should feel for the might of God.

There isn’t anything particularly wonderful about the Galveston beach if you compare it to other beaches in the world. The sand is gray, not white, the shells are all small and mostly broken, the waves are small and gentle compared to say, the California coast. But it is special all the same. I had given up searching for pretty shells that were unbroken by the churning about on the bottom of the Gulf. They are just too hard to find. Then I remembered a book about sea glass that I had read a few months ago and once again turned my eye down to see if I could find a piece of real sea glass.

Sea glass, if you are going to get technical, only becomes sea glass (as opposed to the regular broken- bottle variety of glass) when it has been chunked about enough in the water and sand that all the sharp edges are gone, the smooth shiny surfaces are buffed up and look “frosted”, or if something else strange and destructive has happened to it, like melting. I thought how cool it would be to find a piece of perfect bottle green sea glass, just sitting there waiting for me to discover. The first piece I found however was beer-bottle brown. The wonderful thing about sea glass, though, is that it really doesn’t matter what the glass was in its former life, no matter how mundane or unsavory, when it is remade by the waves and sand, it is unique and beautiful. Shells loose some of there beauty when they are broken and damaged, glass just gets prettier. So I picked up that small brown sliver and rolled it about in my hand as I continued to search for another piece.

The first piece of green glass caught my eye as the sun glinted off of it. It wasn’t technically sea glass yet. The edges were chipped and the surface was scratched, and though it was beautiful, it really wasn’t finished yet. I held on to it for a little while though. It reminded me of myself, a little broken and battered, but not yet fully remade.

I found several more pieces, a few more browns of various shades and sizes, a couple of greens (that were real sea glass) and two white pieces. I had told God as I looked how much I would like to find a green, and I found a green, then I told him how much I would like to find some white glass, and then I found some white glass, so then I told him how much I would like to find some blue glass, but I never found any, at least not that day. I’m not done looking, though, and I’m not done asking. I have a feeling there is a piece of blue glass out there, waiting for me to find it. Maybe it’s just not ready yet.

You can learn a lot from the sea, if you take the time to listen.