overcoming fear(s)

For those who have seen The Passion of The Christ, you know that it's a graphic display of the last few hours of Jesus' life on earth. It was rated R for the gore and violence. When it first came out, we were concerned about letting Meg see it with the youth from church, but we figured she was old enough to handle it. When it was over, she was pretty freaked, but not because of the blood and gore. It was the children who turned into demons that got to her. And those short scenes, totalling maybe 30 seconds, have haunted her to this day. She's fallen asleep several nights since then, and this has been going on for over 8 months, with the lights on. Last night in youth group, they showed a scene, and she came home in tears. We talked with her about it, and it seemed to help, but this is something that she's going to have to work out on her own. We can't take it away, even though we'd give anything to do just that.

How different is her fear from fears that adults have? When you get down to it, it's not really that different at all. We all have fears that we deal with every day. They may seem irrational to some people, but to us they're very real. What may be a big deal to me may seem like nothing to someone else. In one of my favorite books, The Pleasure of My Company, the character Daniel has fears and quirky tendancies that I can't begin to comprehend. Daniel could not step down off of curbs. He had certain routes he could take to go places (walking only, no cars). When he took walks, he would only get on and off the sidewalk by entering where a driveway was cut out of the sidewalk. My favorite quirk was that the total wattage of light bulbs burning in his apartment had to be 1,125 at all times. Any time he turned one light out, he had to turn another light on that used the same watt bulb somewhere else in the apartment. To me, the curb thing is completely illogical. (However, a small part of the anal retentive side of me almost understands the light bulb thing.....) But to Daniel, the curb was his weakness, his achilles heel.

How do we deal with the "demons" in our lives? For me, prayer seems to help most. Even at times when the fear seems to grip its tightest, prayer eventually helps. I often wonder how people who profess no faith can deal with life at its most extreme times. Maybe faith in Someone besides themselves makes no sense. To me, I can't imagine life without that kind of faith. I'm not perfect, and neither is my faith always perfect, but I don't have to be. If I was perfect, I wouldn't need faith......