Irrational Fear and a Hole

Since I didn't grow up in a Christian household, I wasn't aware of this particular verse as a child:

For God has not given us a spirit of fear; but of power and of love and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7

Therefore, when we went to the home of some friends of my parents, I didn't ever want to go into their kitchen. For under the table, against the wall was a hole in the floor. A little, round hole with a diameter of no more than an inch. Glen always told me that was a woolly-booger hole. And I was young enough to believe him. I didn't know what a woolly-booger was, but I was certainly afraid of it.

Fortunately, we usually visited in the living room of their home. On those rare occasions we were in the kitchen, I sat with my feet and legs curled up underneath me in the chair. There was no way my feet were going to dangle down there near that woolly-booger hole!

In an ironic twist, we ended up buying that house from those friends. Now the woolly-booger hole was in MY OWN KITCHEN! I did my best to stay away from the hole and suppose I finally got over my irrational fear. At least mostly. Then one glorious day, my dad installed new linoleum in our kitchen. Whew! My fear of that hole was covered up by new green vinyl.

Turns out that the hole existed because a gas line went through it many, many years earlier for a stove that was situated against that wall. Really nothing all that scary about it after all. But isn't that what often happens with fear? It turns out to be nothing. Yet we curl up and hunker down, afraid of what might come out and bite our toes.

Now when I find myself afraid of something, I retrieve that hidden-in-my-heart verse and allow God's word to wash me in truth and peace.

Besides, I know there's no such thing as woolly-boogers.


p.s. - I was over at Photobucket to find a picture for this when I noticed the Fearless book by Max Lucado. If you have any type of fears at all, I highly recommend this book.