Fears

I have finally gotten around to reading Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays With Morrie”, subtitled "an old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lessons". One of the topics they discuss and upon which I have been reflecting is FEAR and my experiences around fear.

I have no recollection of the common childhood fears of dark places, ghosts, or things that go bump in the night. With one exception. I must have been - oh, maybe in the third grade. It was after dark. I was all alone in the dining room doing my homework. Dad was in his ”study” and I guess Mom was putting my sisters and younger brother to bed. Suddenly I was sure I heard a noise in the dark room just off the kitchen. I perked up my ears and looked. Sure enough, a shadow was moving across that dark neighboring room. I quickly ran across the hall to Dad’s room alerting him, ”There is a prowler in our back room.” He ran out his door and through the yard to the back. He rushed into the room. I heard a loud shriek! He had caught the intruder, only to discover that it was Mom looking for an item she wanted to retrieve. Then we laughed, but for a few minutes I had been afraid.

A second incident about that same time in my life left more lasting effects. I had somehow or other secured a broad-rimmed black hat. I thought I looked great in it and proudly wore it to school the morning after I had received it. As I neared the school a group of men from the congregation were on the water tower working on a leak. They noticed me. I could hear them laugh. Then one said in German “Na, hut, was hast du denn in zinn? Wo willst du mitt den jungen hin!” (Rough translation: “Now hat, what is in your head? Where are you taking that little lad?”) I knew it was a put-down. I was being laughed at. And I felt it in the core of my being. It produced a fear of people making fun of me, a fear of what would people think of me. That ingrained fear resides in me still and I have not yet overcome it. (See previous blog entitled “What Will People Think”.


I have been afraid when I feared loved ones would die. Daughter Elizabeth at less than a year lay in intensive care on Christmas Eve and the Dr. had warned us that she might not be with us on Christmas Day. On a later occasion wife Jane was in a coma from a cerebral aneurysm and our emergency flight from Asia to the USA encountered headwinds forcing a stopover in Alaska. Three times I have been in intensive care units wondering if persons who had attempted suicide would die. My guess is that these fears were not so much the fears of death, but of the consequences of death on me and my family or close friends. Now those are fears worth contemplating.


Fear, of course, is often a natural and God given response, which helps us protect ourselves. So I am glad that sometimes I am still able to be afraid.