Come Away.

I always have a hard time with the question "What is your greatest fear?"...because it's never been obvious to me what I really, truly fear. I mean, knives make me uncomfortable. As do spider crabs (can you say freaky??). But what do I fear most? I...don't know.

But today, on my way home from work, it struck me what I'm really afraid of. And it had to do with a certain aspect of my future, and I was overcome with a wave of panic.

And when I got about ten minutes away from home, I looked to my left at a red light and saw the road leading down to a beach near my house, and I changed course because I felt called down there.

In short: I walked the beach, had a good conversation with myself and with God, and got some things sorted out. I spouted all the fear into a humble little green rock and pitched it into Puget Sound, exhaled, then turned my back and headed up to my car.

I guess the reason I'm telling this story is because I know my fear is not "fixed". It's not like I'll never have that fear again. Sometimes we want something so badly--to be rid of something that irritates or even horrifies us, like my fears often do. But perhaps having the fear removed is not what I chiefly need. It's learning to trust God in spite of the fear, and move through, and remember that He's holding it all so much better than I ever could.

It's easy to write it, something altogether different to believe it, but I'm getting there. And I do feel peace. And I know that fear is a part of being human.

Tonight, I'm munching on granola and realizing that worrying over something is not going to make it better. If anything, it will only make the waiting torture.

Somewhere on a shoreline in Puget Sound a very unassuming green rock is holding a fear of mine. And whenever that fear rears its ugly head, it'll be nice to know that I can picture it being smothered under hundreds of thousands of millions of gallons of water and being crawled on--unconcerned--by spider crabs.

Ew. Spider crabs.

-The GLS
(PS: Riddle me this...SPIDERS don't bother me. CRABS don't bother me. But the combination...SPIDER CRAB...that's disgusting. To be fair, the kind we have around here look more like this.)