Afraid of the dark

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I’ve always been afraid of the dark.

When I was little, my greatest fear was that a burglar or kidnapper or general bad guy would climb into our house through my bedroom window. I don’t know what I thought this bad guy would do at that point, but the fear of someone sneaking, in the darkness of the middle of the night, into the room I shared with my little sister was enough. At this age, my solution was to set up our bedroom so that my twin bed was directly under the window. Then, if the bad guy did get in, he’d probably hop right over my bed and not even notice me. (Sorry, sis.) Problem solved!

When I was a little older, I moved into a room of my own. The window in that room was huge, covering almost all of one wall, and looked out into the front yard and the street. In that room, it was the shadows of the trees outside my window, magnified by the outside lights, that freaked me out. My bed wound up next to the wall closest to the window so that I could at least roll over onto my side and close my eyes to try to ignore the creepy shadows that moved when the wind blew. What I imagined those shadows to be ranged from bad guys to wild animals to dinosaurs (thanks, Michael Crichton).

For some reason, the college apartment I shared with three other girls didn’t frighten me as much. My room was on the second floor of our little townhouse-style place, or maybe it was just that naive college-student mentality that I was awesome and nothing would ever hurt me. (Oh, if I could go back in time and lecture myself…)

When I got my first real job out of college, I was excited and terrified to rent a tiny one-bedroom apartment and live alone for the first time. I wound up adopting a cat to keep me company, but that’s another story. (Did you know that cats live FOR-EV-ER?) My apartment was nestled into a corner of the complex, on the second floor. I often left the TV and lights on at night to make it look like more than one person lived there, and of course I had my vicious cat to protect me from bad guys and dinosaurs.

Jump ahead a couple of years, I’m one-year married, and my husband and I decide to move away (my first time leaving my hometown). We both accepted jobs in South Florida, but I had to move right away to start my new position. He was still finishing up a semester of school, so I lived in our new place alone for about a month. I don’t think I slept much of that time. Between the police sirens I heard at night and my creepy neighbors, I came to dread the evenings and the darkness of night. I never left our place after sunset, scenes from Law & Order: SVU flashing through my mind. I convinced myself that I could be kidnapped in the grocery store parking lot. I slept in our guest bedroom because it was closest to the front door, and You’ve Got Mail played on a loop all night long on a tiny TV/VCR combo until my hubby and the rest of our stuff finally joined me.

These days, I’m secretly relieved that our older daughter leaves a bathroom light on at night because it means I can see light from our room, too. There’s something about being in total darkness that makes me panic. And now that I have two kids, and the accompanying responsibilities, and a job, and life to lie in bed pondering, the darkness brings not only fear, but worry. And when I worry, I don’t sleep. And when I don’t sleep, I turn into a crazy person, and my fears and worries become more irrational… you see where this is going.

For Christmas, my husband gave me a CD (yes, we still buy CDs) of Ellie Holcomb’s album As Sure As The Sun. I listened to it on repeat for weeks. It hasn’t left my van. All of her lyrics—rooted in Truth—speak to my heart, but those from “Night Song” resonate with me most:

Morning feels so far away, questions keeping me awake
Will you sing, sing your night song?
All these lies that are owning me, all this fear makes it hard to breathe
Will you be, be my night song?

The truth that sings into my darkness
The melody of love that leads me on
The voice that comforts all my sadness
Oh, even when the suffering is long, be my night song

Unmet longings steal my mind, calm my heart with your lullaby
Will you sing, sing your night song?
The sound of love surrounding me, promise that you will never leave
How I need, I need your night song

The truth that sings into my darkness
The melody of love that leads me on
The voice that comforts all my sadness
Oh, even when the suffering is long, be my night song

How I need to hear God’s lullaby at night—truth singing into my darkness! I wept in the car when this track played for the first time, because yes. I don’t need to lie in bed in the middle of the night, wide awake, consumed with fear and worry. His voice comforts all of my sadness. His melody of love chases away my irrational fears and leads me into peaceful sleep. He promises that He will never leave. His song calms my heart.

Fear is all-consuming when it goes unchecked. But when I call out to God for peace and calm on those restless nights? It goes. And I sleep.

 

You can listen to “Night Song” here. Music and lyrics by Ellie Holcomb, Christa Wells, and Nicole Witt. 

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It’s not fair!

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Over the last week or so, I’ve heard this sentiment several times a day.

“It’s not fair! How come D gets to stay up and play after I go to bed?”

“It’s not fair! How come YOU guys get to stay up after I go to bed?” (Because staying up until midnight doing laundry and dishes is SO MUCH FUN!) 

“It’s not fair! You get to wear whatever you want and I have to wear a uniform.” (Do you know how much time I’d save if I didn’t have to bother with putting together an outfit every morning?) 

“It’s not fair! You have a phone and I don’t.” (Don’t even get me started on that one.)

“It’s not fair! Fill in the blank.”

As much as the whining can begin to grate on me after a while, I sure understand where she’s coming from. Her sweet 6-year-old heart aches over what she sees as huge injustices in her little world. Her baby sister is on a different sleep schedule than she is and still needs one last bottle after big sis goes to bed. Mom and Dad stay up way too late catching up on household chores and watching Friends. Mostly watching Friends. She doesn’t get to choose her clothing every morning (thank goodness for that—we’d never get out the door), and she doesn’t have any electronics of her own. To her, it’s all wrong. It’s just… not… fair.

Last fall at church, I heard a sermon about the parable of the workers in the vineyard (the link is at the end of this post if you’re interested). Here’s the passage from Matthew chapter 20:

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

“About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.

“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’

“‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

“But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

I’m sorry, What? This lesson is tough for me to swallow. I think if I were the worker who sweated my hiney off in the vineyard from 9-5, only to be paid the same as some slacker who showed up at 4 p.m., I’d be ticked too. Who cares that this is the payment I agreed to? That guy didn’t deserve the same pay. I’d have protested. Thrown a fit maybe. Whined about it, definitely. Not fair.

Part of my takeaway from this parable and the sermon that day was the reminder that God’s timetable isn’t our timetable. His rewards aren’t always what we expect or deem fair. But the kicker for me was this: Comparing ourselves to others gets us absolutely nowhere. It’s a complete and total waste of time that will eat away at your joy if you let it.

A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot. —Proverbs 14:30

When my big girl complains about all the things her baby sister gets to do (babies know how to have a good time, right?) or all the freedom grown-ups have (ha.), we try to point out all the things that are awesome about being 6. She can ride a bike, she gets to eat dessert, she can color and paint and create, she can read, she gets to sleep in a bunk bed… as opposed to little sister, who has to take naps and has no teeth and can’t walk, and whose daily dose of fun comes from getting into the cat’s water bowl. At this, E will giggle and say something along the lines of, “Oh yeah!” and skip away happily. And just like that, the moment of utter despair has passed when her focus shifts to the good things in her life and she realizes just how great she has it.

Sometimes I need someone to pull me out of the trap of comparison and what’s fair and what’s not. It’s a deep hole, and when I fall in, it hurts. It’s so easy to slip, too. A friend gets a new car or moves into a bigger house, someone’s husband gets a promotion, the other moms are just so much better at EVERYTHING than I am… the list gets long and things start to spiral out of control in my heart.

Nothing good will come of me comparing my life with someone else’s and dwelling on the it’s-not-fairs. Not to mention what a tragedy it is when I lose sight of all God has given me because I’m too distracted by fretting over what He has given to someone else. So I’m challenging myself—and I’ll challenge you, too. When comparison sneaks in and you want to say in your whiniest voice, “It’s not fair!”, “Why them?”, or “Why not me?”, pause for a moment, and take inventory of God’s gifts in your life. What I’ve found so far is that when I stop to look around at the good things, the people, the relationships in my life, I start feeling very, very silly for being envious… and very, very grateful instead.

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By the way, next time my daughter complains that I get to stay up late and she doesn’t, I’m going to offer to trade with her. 7 p.m. bedtime sounds like a dream to this tired mama.

Listen to Jim Keller’s sermon from The Upside of Down series here. 

Not a perfectionist

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I have a confession to make.

I’m not who you think I am.

I’m going to tell you a big secret. Are you ready?

I am…

A mess. Such a gigantic mess.

People who know me from work often mistake me for a perfectionist. Someone who is organized. Detail-oriented. Punctual. Put-together. A Stickler with a capital S. When I try to protest, “No, I’m really not!” I’m usually dismissed with a wave and a laugh. “I know it’s hard when you’re a perfectionist,” they say. “You’re too hard on yourself.” And I’m left feeling bewildered, because I know the real me, and I’m thinking, Wanna come over to my house and see for yourself how NOT a perfectionist I am?

To be fair, when you’re a copy editor by profession (OK, really by nature), the desire for neatness and consistency and right-ness is part of the gig. So yes, I can make sentences flow nicely, and I can draw people in with a compelling paragraph (gosh, at least I hope that’s what I’m doing), and I can try my best to make sure the capitals and the commas and the quotation marks are all in their proper places. On paper and on screen, yes, I am organized. I am neat. I am annoying with my red pen. I hold all the Rules, the Guidelines, the Rights and Wrongs in my brain, and can whip them out at a moment’s notice.

So why in the world can’t I be like that in my actual, day-to-day life?

A typical morning in my house starts around 6:30 a.m., when my 6-year-old bounces out of bed in the most annoyingly cheerful manner (let’s get real, I’m just jealous of her morning-person super powers). She wakes me up and then flips on PBS because it takes me about half an hour to become coherent in the mornings, and she knows this. Bless her. Once I’ve woken up enough to notice the time, my morning panic ritual begins. I forgot to make the baby’s bottles for the day last night! I forgot to run a load of school uniform laundry! I forgot to prep our lunches! I never checked E’s backpack yesterday to even see if she had homework or papers that needed signing. I forgot that I was supposed to run to the store for decent school lunch items, and now I’m sending my child to school with four varieties of crackers and a juice box. You get the idea. By some miracle, I get the baby fed and settled with whoever is watching her that day, and we usually manage to get ourselves out the door at least close to on-time. But more often than not, my hair is still wet, and I do my makeup in the car after dropping off the 1st grader but before I arrive at work… or in the office parking lot, where I wave to my coworkers from my minivan with a tube of mascara in my hand as they’re walking in.

Then I remember, I didn’t plan anything for dinner, either.

And on these mornings, I beat myself up over what a total disaster I am, and what a mess my life feels like, and how tired and guilty I feel. And then I pull it together, walk into work, sit down at my desk, pop open my laptop, and train my focus elsewhere, putting everything else out of my mind until I’m back home again that evening and starting it all over again.

I need help.

Over the weekend, this routine—which began around August of last year, when I returned to work part-time after our sweet miracle baby (a story for another day) was a little over 3 months old—finally caught up with me, and I collapsed under the weight of the burden I’d been carrying. I cried, I curled up into a ball, I yelled at my amazing, wonderful, always supportive husband, I cried some more, I apologized… I felt all the feels, as I guess people are saying these days. I felt them out loud, and it was ugly. And then I took a deep breath, and I let God take it all, and I slept.

All I can say is Praise God, His mercies are new every morning. On Sunday I woke with a new resolve. Instead of feeling this sense of pressure because of all that I perceive to be expected of me and because of what all the other working moms are doing well (are they, really though? am I not alone in this chaotic existence?), I felt something new and unusual and a little uncomfortable…

Grace.

Boy, am I flawed. So flawed! I am so imperfect. I do not have it all together, as much as I’m tempted to pretend I do. My life is messy, and I am a human being in need of grace. God gives us His grace so freely, and it’s so unbelievable and so overwhelming, and yet, that I can grasp. Giving myself a little grace, though? For a mom/ wife/ daughter/ sister/ friend/ employee who wants so badly to be the person everyone needs me to be? That is hard.

This morning I took a little trip to Target with the baby (she doesn’t seem to like Target much, which is really a problem), and I had a little too much fun selecting file folders and desk organizers and a planner. It’s a tiny step toward organizing my home life so that I can be the mom and wife and woman God has called me to be… not because it’s what’s expected of me, but because I want to take good care of these people He’s given me. It’s by no means a magic wand that will fix my messiness. I’m sure I will still feel messy, and my home will be dusty and un-vacuumed, and my surfaces will be cluttered. I will probably still forget to make the bottles sometimes, and I will probably definitely still pull a dirty shirt out of the hamper and wear it again because I decided to sleep instead of do laundry last night.

But today my heart feels a little tidier, and it’s a good place to start.