The fear of thunder

Written in my journal last week:

I'm sitting here next to a lit candle, watching a thunderstorm pass by - everything in my house is unplugged, the power is flickering on and off, and I'm amusing myself by reading and watching my cats run from room to room, trying to escape the thunder. I feel sorry for them, because I can't get on their level to explain that the thunder isn't going to hurt them, there isn't any danger from the noise - it's just something awesome to behold and enjoy. I really feel sorry for people who are afraid of thunderstorms, I really love them - the raw power never ceases to amaze me.

It's funny what people are afraid of, don't you think? My friend Matt, for example, is afraid of spiders, to the point of not watching movies like Arachnophobia and getting creeped out by certain points of video games we play. My wife doesn't do horror movies at all, any thing with scary music does her in. Me, I'm scared of little kids. Not "real" kids that you see at church or school or whatever, but rather the ghost kids in some horror movies. *brrr*. On the other hand, every time we have a school performance I do think about what would happen if the kids realized that they outnumber us like three to one. How do you fight off 500 elementary students?

When I was a kid, I was afraid of all kinds of things. I bet it was pretty annoying for my parents! (In fact, now that I think about it, I bet a lot of things I did were pretty annoying.) I was really afraid of someone breaking into our house, and either stealing from us or killing us all (for no apparent reason, I don't think we had any "enemies"). I was afraid of staying alone at our house (mostly for the above reason), and I was tremendously afraid of the dark. We lived in a somewhat creepy house that made a lot of weird noises and had a very dark basement, so that didn't help much.

At some point I decided two things. A.) I would only live as long as God allowed me to live (although I still don't see this as an excuse not to wear a seatbelt - if you're that dumb God will allow you to come home early, if you know what I mean), and B.) I had to face my fears or be trapped by them.

I started walking around in the dark a lot, not turning on lights anytime I walked through a room. We had woods in our back yard, so I would go out there at night and walk around, convincing myself that there was nothing to be afraid of. Every time I saw a haunted house, I went to it. It's part of the reason that I always wanted to be in some kind of Halloween haunt, so I could face my fears and help others do the same (and lets face it, scaring people is fun anyway). That's really how the Haunted Plantation got started.

Now living in the dark has become second nature enough that Matt started calling me "Uncle Caveman". Once I moved into my own house, I generally never turned on lights at all (partly to avoid glare on any electronic screen, but whatever).

All of this has me thinking - what am I afraid of at this point in my life?




And how do I face my fears again?