Camp Fear

Fear is the theme for the week.  It might be said that it's been the focus of an odd personal devotional.  I chant a litany of "Life is not for the faint of heart" while I tremble.
I'm afraid of just about everything.  Pretending I'm not is something I often do very well.
And yet, fear often fills me.  One recent night fear slapped me in the face with a dream so profound that the memory of it follows me still.

In the dream, I am running, running from fear, myself, from life.  Trapped in a corner, I'm left to face that which I fear most.  I must look my two greatest fears in the eye.  My heart is in my throat as I see what has been chasing me through the years:

the fear of being alone
the fear of being unhappy.

Irony swells up in my chest and forces itself out in a mind-shattering scream.  These fears have twisted themselves into a tangle of wretched self-fulfillment.  Despair opens before me like a giant black hole.  I fight the urge to jump and form an uneasy truce with fear.  I sit on the edge of the darkness and dangle my feet in the gaping hole.

Fear has been a most cunning opponent.  She has a ravenous hunger that is only satisfied by more fear, more of the same.  I have often over fed her.  Suddenly, I remember Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.  Flying monkey fear has been menacing me.  Might I possess the power to return home just as Dorothy had? 

The black hole starts to close beneath my feet.  I hurry to pull my feet to safety just as the second fear leaps from the heart of the darkness and sits beside me.  The fear of being unhappy drapes a cold, bony arm over my shoulders.  It leers at me through a smile of broken teeth. 

I meet its gaze with my own.  The smile starts to crumble and it turns to dust.  With a smooth and graceful motion, I sweep it into the black hole. 
"Good riddance," I say softly.  It is a prayer of remembering.  I note the heartache this fear has brought to me and drop the memories one-by-one into the black pit.  They turn to rose petals as the darkness swallows them.

My fears have fought hard to live outside me.  They've really been a part of me all along.  The black hole no longer menaces.  I stand and walk across it and then back again.  It is solid.  I am not lost within it.  I look down and see my reflection gazing back up at me.  I bend down and gently touch its face.