The Walkway with the Spider

Despite my debilitating fear of the huntsman variety (which are freakily big, fast, scary-looking even in death, and not what you want to wake up to find you’ve slept on all night… thanks a lot little brother who thought it would be funny to put one in my bed!), I’m not all that afraid of spiders. Sure, I wouldn’t keep them as a pet or study them for a living, but they’re okay. Especially those almost invisible daddy-longlegged ones.

My two-year-old daughter, on the other hand, is terrified of all of them. I don’t think it helps at all that her four-year-old sister points out every spider she sees. And names them. ‘Spidergirl’ is a yellow and black one living in our garden, ‘Lizzie’ is Spidergirl’s slightly smaller friend, and ‘Spiderman’ was a six-legged daddy-longlegs living in our garage.

It’s Spiderman who’s been causing trouble for the last two months. While my four-year-old stopped to talk to him, my two-year-old won’t go anywhere near him – which is a problem given the only way to get into the house from the garage is via the spider. She’d stand beside her car door and beg me to carry her past.

Spiderman was only there for a week before moving on. I’ve been trying to convince my daughter for a month that it’s safe to walk past that particular spot, but there’s been no convincing her. Until last week.

We’d just come home from shopping and I had my arms full. She was standing there, like she usually does as she waits for me to walk with her, but then she surprised me. She took two tentative steps then walked determinedly to the other end of the garage. A metre ‘past Spiderman’, she stopped and turned back to me with the biggest grin on her face. I was so proud of her, I almost cried. I couldn’t put into words the pride I felt right then, knowing how much courage that three metre walk had taken.

But even as I stood there, shopping in my arms, praising her as I tried not to cry, I realised something – I was the only one who knew what an achievement that had been for her. To anyone else – her sister and dad even – it would have just looked like she was walking into the house like everyone else. No big deal. And yet, it was. And she and I alone knew it.

We all have fears. Some of them are big and completely understandable, acceptable even. Fear of public speaking, spiders, flying, failure, heights. People expect people to be afraid of those things. But alongside them are the fears that make little or no logical sense, the ones we hide because they’re almost laughworthy – and yet, we’re not laughing.  They’re just as real, if not more so, because they’re so personal.   

For me, among other things, I have an almost irrational fear of making phone calls. Emails, SMS, face to face – totally fine. Love them. Actual phone calls? With the exception of family, I’ll do almost anything to get out of making them. I’m better these days than I used to be – mainly because I have kids and therefore don’t have a choice (who else is going to make their doctors’ appointments???) – but I still get nervous every time I call someone and take a while to calm down after. I fake it, pretend I’m totally confident to the person on the other end, but I’m shaking inside. I make myself lists of everything I have to say/ask beforehand because I get so flustered I forget why I’m even calling. Even then, I usually miss half of it.

I made three phone calls the other day within the space of half an hour. I made two different medical appointments and called the library to sort out a problem with my library card. My to-do list had a huge smiley face beside it when I’d finished but that was nothing compared to the sense of achievement I felt.

As I sat there, smiling to myself at the grand feat I’d just pulled off, I knew that no one else would appreciate it. No one knew I’d just faced my fears and won.

But God did. There, in that moment, God smiled with me. He knew.

God sees our fears. The big ones, the small ones, the rational and irrational ones, the ones that make us merely nervous and the ones that make us shake so bad we can’t even move.

And like me with my daughter, he stands there, so proud he could burst as he watches us conquer them. Others might not know what an achievement you just conquered, but God does.

He sees, he knows and boy is he proud of you!

A Vision bigger than Eurovision

I became part of history last Sunday when I, an Australian, voted in Eurovision.

[NB. For those of you who don’t have a clue what Eurovision is, it’s a giant European song contest held every year. It’s amazingly wacky,  highly entertaining, and somehow, Australia managed to finagle their way into it this year, despite not being a European country, and were therefore allowed to vote alongside their European counterparts. Picture Australian Idol, but a lot LOT bigger, and crazier, and a large portion of the world watching it…]

Exciting as it was, voting really wasn’t that big a deal. I picked my favourite performance, clicked a little button beside the corresponding photo and sent off a vote along with a couple of hundred million other people watching. Since every one of those people could potentially vote twenty times, believe me, my little vote didn’t mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things.

But when the winner was announced, and turned out to be the performer I’d voted for, I felt pretty proud. As if, maybe, my vote actually had made a difference. Had it? Probably not. I’m pretty certain he still would have won without my vote. But I was part of it. I voted for the winner. 

I love being part of history. There’s something seriously cool about being able to say, even if it’s just to yourself, “I was there. I was part of that.” It’s that realisation that you’re part of something bigger – that your life counts for something more than just what you can see.

It’s one of the reasons I love prayer.

I’ll admit, I pray a lot. It's always come pretty naturally to me. A friend once joked that I’d pray if an ant crawled over my foot. I laughed, not so much because it was funny as because it was likely true! Awkwardly, I’ve also found myself praying during movies – more than once -  only to have to consciously (and frequently) remind myself that one, those characters are actors and two, nothing I pray is going to change the outcome of said movie… Believe it or not, the Titanic is still going to sink…

Still, that aside, there’s just something incredible about prayer. It’s power, it’s relationship, it’s peace, it’s war, it’s something far bigger than me.

So often in life we’re rendered helpless. We watch the news and see people hurting over the other side of the world, drive past car crashes, hear of presidential campaigns, friends who are hurting, celebrities whose lives are falling apart. Much as my heart aches to help them, I physically can’t.

I remember watching the news after the Boston Marathon bombing and hearing about a young girl who’d been badly injured. In a single moment, her life had drastically changed. I was heartbroken. I wanted to give her a hug, help her somehow as she tried to put her life back together. Of course, I couldn’t. I didn’t even know her name. And yet, I’ve prayed for her ever since. Prayed that someone else would be there to hug her and get alongside her as she learnt to walk again and found reason to smile. I doubt very much that I’ll ever meet her, and yet, I know God has listened to those prayers and answers them. 

I have the privilege of praying for people all over the world – rich and poor, powerful and weak, presidents and beggars, those I know well and those I know I’ll never meet. The vast majority of them have no idea I’m praying for them, fighting for them, beseeching God on their behalf. They don’t even know I exist. And yet, God does and God is working in their lives because of my prayers.

Prayer is powerful. Never doubt that. While one vote might not make a great deal of difference, one prayer can. 

Ever feel completely helpless? You’re not – not while you can pray. Because when you pray, God listens. And when God listens, things happen. And lives are changed.

I’m just an ordinary person. With the exception of my kids and the characters in my books, I don’t hold a lot of sway (come to think of it, my characters don’t always behave the way I think they will either!)  And yet, God has given me a power far greater than kings, queens or presidents – communication with him, the King of all kings. Have you ever considered the reality of that? You, who alone have little sway in anything that happens in the world, are listened to by the one who created the entire world and can do the impossible. Seriously. Yeah, he might not always answer the way you’d like – but what if he does? What if, because you prayed, someone’s life was saved?

Believe me, exciting as it was, Eurovision’s got nothing on that!

Fear, Faith and a Duck Named Grandpa

Every now and then, someone says something that just floors me and I have no idea how to answer. I remember one such time when I was talking to a non-Christian friend and the topic turned to something coming up which I was dreading. The comment of, “that’s the problem with you Christians – you say you have faith and trust God but you’re still afraid,” was not the response I was expecting. We hadn't even been talking about God!

I wish I’d had a good response at the time but all I could think was, “yeah ... duh ... your point?”

Of course I’m still afraid! I’m human, aren’t I? If becoming a Christian automatically took away all our fears, everyone would want to be one! It doesn't take away fear any more than it takes away pain. But then, isn’t that the point of faith? Doing something you’re afraid of and trusting God with the outcome? At least, I think it is. It wouldn’t take much faith to do something if we knew it was a certainty.

Just because I know God will get me through doesn’t mean I’m not scared. Fear and faith aren’t mutually exclusive.  In fact, I happen to believe our greatest faith is shown through our greatest fears. When we face something despite our fears because we know that God will hold us through it.

We had a duck unexpectedly come to visit this week. I know, weird. I got up one morning, looked out the back yard and there it was – a big black duck. Quite possibly the biggest duck I've ever seen. Beautiful, but big. And with a sharp looking beak. It stayed for two whole days before flying (?) off to who knows where. My animal-loving girls were ecstatic! It didn't take them long to name it (Grandpa Duck) and claim it as their pet. The duck liked sitting just outside our door, so the girls sat on the other side of the door chatting to it, captivated by every move it made. 

Of course, it was a different story when we actually went outside and that piece of glass wasn’t between them. My two-year-old was happy to chat to the duck and follow it around – until it looked at her. It turned, she sprinted. Toward me. She was climbing up my legs before I could even move my arms to pick her up. She was terrified, but knew I could be trusted. She put her faith in me. Just like I put my faith in God. 

Do I have fears? Absolutely! Enough to make me curl up in a ball and never leave the shelter of a nice, clean (spider-free) corner of my bedroom – if I let them. Which I don’t. Why? Because, apart from that being a ridiculously silly way to live, I have faith in the God who is bigger than any of them.

And unlike me, who could have quite easily failed to protect my daughter (against the scary, terrifying, uh, duck...), God never will. My biggest fears are nothing compared to his love and care for me. No matter what happens in life, I know that God will be there for me, protecting me, comforting me, directing me. In that, I have complete faith. 

And you can too. 

Famous Failures (or were they Successes?)

I've always been intrigued by the stories behind things. Call it the writer in me but I love hearing about how something, or someone, became what they are today. People, songs, books, movies, ideas - pretty much anything really. I have a book on my shelf about how a bunch of foods came into being (anyone want to know the story behind the creation of Dr Pepper?!). So, when I was at the library last week and happened across a book titled 'Toys! Amazing Stories Behind Some Great Inventions' (by Don Wulffson, if you're interested), needless to say, I borrowed it.

It's been fascinating reading. Really, really fascinating. But what's astounded me the most are the number of ridiculously popular toys which have come about through utter failure. Their creators weren't trying to make toys. They were trying to invent other things, and failed.

The slinky? You know, that brilliantly coloured spring we've all spent far too much time watching 'walk' down stairs, mindlessly juggling from hand to hand (or, if you're a parent, untangling...)? Failure. Richard James, a navy-hired engineer, was supposed to be inventing something to stabilise the navigational instruments on ships. He never did succeed at that. But he did accidentally knock a big spring off a shelf and watch in fascination while it walked down his books to the floor. Long story short, he sold it as a toy and within a few years, he and his wife were millionaires.

Mr Potato Head? Created by a frustrated father who’d tried every trick in the book and still couldn't get his kids to behave at dinner time.

Silly putty? Not quite what the US Army had been after when they commissioned the General Electric Company to find a synthetic replacement for making gas masks, boots and tires during WW2. Bouncy, able to withstand cold without cracking and heat without melting, super stretchy - but as far as the army were concerned, utterly useless.

Failures, all of them. And yet, I doubt they'd call themselves that. Nor any of the millions of children world over who've played with the toys they created.

Failure is rarely the big deal we make of it. (Or, perhaps, given the stories behind these toys, failure really is the big deal we make of it, because, believe me, making millions off a failure sounds like a pretty good deal to me!)

We all have areas we feel like failures. Maybe it's as a spouse, a parent, a friend, an artist, a daughter or son, a teacher, an inventor, or a billion other things. But you know what's great?

It's this: feeling like a failure, doesn't mean you are.

I'm certain these inventors (and this father) felt like absolutely giving up some days. They’d tried everything and failed. They had no idea how truly successful their failures were. And neither do you.

One other thing I've noticed from this book? Many of the failures' potentials as toys were noticed not by the inventor themselves (who probably still had their heads in their hands, and their jobs on the line) but by someone close to them. A wife, a friend, a random person they chatted to at a party. I know I've said it before (see http://aheartfulofhope.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/watch-out-shes-good.html), but never underestimate the power of your words. You might be the one who proves to someone just how not a failure they truly are.

Next time you feel like a failure? Remember, they weren’t – and neither are you.