“Mom, I hit a baseball and broke the lights in the shop.” It was the first official day of summer vacation. Miles had gotten up excited about summer, and promptly started watching one of his favorite movies, “The Sandlot”. After the movie went off, he tore up to the shop to hit some baseballs in to the net, and that is when it happened. He soft-tossed a ball and did what Bennie “the Jet” would have done…he hit it hard. The ball crashed in to two, eight-foot florescent light bulbs that shattered everywhere. Thankfully, he was completely unharmed, physically anyway, and he and I got to work cleaning up the mess that was all over the shop. I wanted to make sure that I taught him that even though it was an accident, he still needed to be responsible and help clean up the mess. We opened the shop doors, turned the fan on, and grabbed the brooms and shop-vac. After getting the mess up, I found out that florescent light bulbs contain mercury vapors, and that children shouldn’t be around when one has been broken and is being cleaned up. I also found out that you should never use a vacuum cleaner or fan to keep the dust particles and vapors from stirring around. This is where the panic began. In trying to be a good parent and make my kid be responsible for the mess he had made, I had potentially exposed him to harmful mercury vapors. I googled and googled, finding anything from nothing would happen to certain that he could become ill. I panicked to Keith. I called on friends who were nurse practitioners and doctors. I called Poison Control. I was so scared I couldn’t think. I was paralyzed with fear. I let a little fear creep in and before I knew what had happened, I was in full blown panic over a situation that I had absolutely no control over. There are fears that are healthy fears, and had I known about the potential hazard of the light bulbs, the fear would have been healthy; I would have at least made him wear a mask and not use the vacuum cleaner and fan. But because I didn’t know until after the fact, it became a crippling, paralyzing fear that I had caused harm to my child. While I suppose I did have a right to be scared, I let fear rule me that day. The fears that keep you awake at night, keep you from doing things that you like to do and keep you from living an abundant life are the ones that we have to release in to God’s hands. God never desires for us to live a fearful life. The enemy uses fear to shame us, guilt us, and keep us bound up in a way that we are terrified to even try to break free. When we are bound up in fear, we are not serving God. We are serving fear, and as the Zach Williams’ song states, “Fear Is a Liar”. “Fear, he is a liar…he will take your breath, stop you in your steps…he will rob your rest, steal your happiness”. The Bible tells us so many times to not fear…scripture after scripture God tells us that He has it all under His control. So why do we fear so much? Because we can’t see the end. God knows the beginning, middle, and the end. He knows what is best in the moment, and we have to let our faith in God be bigger than our fears of the unknown. We must trust God that He will take care of us, guide us, and everything will end for His glory. This doesn’t mean that we sit back do nothing, it means we use God as a guide and the wisdom He gives us to get through any and every situation. Bad things are going to happen. But we cannot let fear keep us from living. What we have to do as Christians is when fear creeps in, we have to combat it with truth and pray for God to guide us so that fear doesn’t keep us from living a life of freedom and joy. It has been a couple of months now, and Miles is fine. God protected him not just from the shattered glass, but also protected him from my ignorance. Keith went and purchased a new light for the shop. Healthy fear (and lack of lighting) has switched us over to LED lights. Rest assured, I will know how to safely clean one of those up should another baseball fly its way.
“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10
“For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of love and of power and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7
