Be Afraid

Leaning-in to the fear.

Bedtime, when I was a kid, was often a difficult time. Nine years old. It wasn’t that I couldn’t sleep when I was nine years old. I could. And it wasn’t that I had nightmares. I did have nightmares, on occasion, but they were infrequent and I don’t recall them really impacting my sleep. My nine-year-old self could eventually drift off into a deep sleep, but only after a period of time – sometimes hours – of terrifying sounds and images coursing through my brain and seemingly taking over my body. Like many nine-year-old’s, I felt afraid at bedtime.

I don’t recall feeling afraid of ghosts under my bed or of monsters in my closet or of vampires in my doorway. It wasn’t the knife fingers of Freddy Krueger or the sharp teeth of a Gremlin or the white mask of Michael Meyers that haunted my nine-year-old self. What most often kept my thoughts swirling and my muscles tight was none other than Bible stories.