Halloween seems like a good time to talk about our fears. Even the most stoic, hardened human on earth has SOMETHING that spooks them, right? Well, I’ve got a two-step story to share with you this Halloween. A redemption story about turning fear into something unexpectedly beautiful. I can’t wait to tell you the tale. It’s one of my favorites.
Before we jump into our story, let’s look at fear on different levels, shall we?
Level #1 – Our superficial fears.
Our superficial fears take center stage this weekend for sure. In fact, data shows that over half of the US population loves some good Halloween spookiness. The National Retail Federation tracks seasonal and holiday spending in the US, and has a Halloween Data Center (for real). According to their website, 58% of Americans will celebrate Halloween 2020. The average Halloween consumer will spend $92 this year, with a total expected $8,000,000,000 in spending on the holiday in 2020. That’s BILLION with a “B”.
So, what are some of your superficial fears? Spiders? Snakes? Ghosts? COVID-19? The US Presidential Election? I’ll willingly share mine. I’m afraid of alligators, haunted houses and unseen things that brush up against my legs in the ocean. I also find worn down ice cream trucks, dolls with missing eyes and clowns especially creepy. My personal worst case scenario is a clown driving a dilapidated ice cream truck with a giant pet alligator. No, thank you!
Level #2 – Our phobias.
What if our superficial fears turn into something greater? Like a phobia? In other words, an object or a situation that triggers marked fear and physical symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, and shortness of breath. In some cases, these symptoms may escalate into a full-blown panic attack.
Just for fun, here is one of my favorite scenes from the 1965 animated TV special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas”. It’s the one where Lucy works to pinpoint Charlie Brown’s fears. Best line in the whole clip in my opinion? When Lucy says, “Well, as they say on TV, the mere fact that you realize you need help indicates that you are not too far gone.” Funny AND true.
Unofficial top ten phobias of all time.
All cartoons aside, the National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 12.5% of American adults will experience a specific phobia at some time in their lives. According to a blog article I read at fearof.net, here is one list of the “top ten phobias of all time” with updates for 2020.
- #10 = Trypophobia – The fear of holes.
- #9 = Aerophobia – The fear of flying.
- #8 = Mysophobia – The fear of germs.
- #7 Claustrophobia – The fear of small spaces.
- #6 = Astraphobia – The fear of thunder and lightning.
- #5 = Cynophobia – The fear of dogs.
- #4 = Agoraphobia – The fear of open or crowded spaces.
- #3 = Acrophobia – The fear of heights.
- #2 = Ophidiophobia – The fear of snakes.
- #1 = Arachnophobia – The fear of spiders.
Hmmmmm. I wonder why I avoid having my back to the room or a crowd in a public place? Either that’s a slight nod to (#7) claustrophobia, (#4) agoraphobia or I was assassinated in another life and I still feel a protective urge to keep my attention facing outward. Yeah, I see you, Abraham Lincoln. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Former Mr. President?
Level #3 – Our hidden deeper fears.
But what about the even deeper fears? The ones that lie buried in our hearts and insidiously pull strings in our relationships and careers? Those are the ones involved in my story today.
I also recently read a blog article called “Top Ten Fears That Hold People Back In Life” from Psychology Today (January 2020). Here is the list according to that author:
- Change.
- Loneliness.
- Failure.
- Rejection.
- Uncertainty.
- Something bad happening.
- Getting hurt.
- Being judged.
- Inadequacy.
- Loss of freedom.
Any of that ring familiar if we are being honest with each other?
So, right here, my friends, is where our two-part story for this week picks up. Ready for the tale? Let’s go.
Part One: Haunted by Christmas caroling
One of the scariest (and probably most misinterpreted) experiences of my life was in a nursing home. The late 1970’s. I was in early elementary school. A Girl Scout. Troop 1098, to be exact. And my troop was Christmas caroling in a neighborhood nursing home. Oh, I’m sure we were adorable – little uniformed scouts, all rosy cheeked and innocent, singing nostalgic Christmas songs for the residents.
Except I didn’t feel adorable. No, I felt uncomfortable – like I was trespassing. Like I could somehow sense a deep pain and sorrow just underneath the gaudy tinsel and fluorescent lights. And I was afraid.
I remember avoiding eye contact with the elderly forms – some leaning over in their wheelchairs, others in padded recliners seemingly staring off into space and rhythmically picking at their crocheted lap blankets. I purposefully held back in the group so I wouldn’t be volunTOLD to go wish “Merry Christmas” to anybody too scary.
Remember – I was very young. My memory of the event and what happened next is from the perspective of a little girl.
One door open at the end of the hall
I have no idea what compelled me to pay closer attention to one open door in the hallway. But when I looked inside, there was a gaunt, pallid woman laying in her bed. She was holding one skeletal hand out to me, beckoning me to enter.
And for some crazy reason, I did.
As I cautiously inched closer to her bed, I was taken by the stale smell of the air and the wildness of her look. She had long, stringy gray hair splayed out behind her like an oily fan across her pillow. Her skin was paper-thin and her blue veins were visible in her arm and hand. She had deep set wrinkles, crooked stained teeth and vacant eyes.
I never saw her coming
And then – like a bolt of lightning out of nowhere – she grabbed my wrist, and rasped the most horrible words my little ears could imagine. I froze as her terrifying voice settled like a dark shroud over my head.
“PLEASE HELP ME.”
I tore my wrist free from her bony grasp and fled that room like my life depended on it. I was sure that I had encountered a literal witch and she was going to haunt me forever.
Shocked into silence
Panicked, I caught back up to my merry little pod of carolers and was silent the rest of the outing. I told no one about the witch in the room down the hall. Not a nurse. Not an adult troop leader. And not my parents. Nobody.
My fear from that encounter was eclipsed only by the guilt that I felt as our wood-paneled station wagon pulled out of the parking lot and into the dark December night. I was convinced that my shocked silence had killed that terrifying husk of a woman. That somehow – at my tender young age – I was responsible for her demise. And that she was going to ultimately snatch me, if not in life, then at the moment of my own death.
That night I started to perceive death as scary and cold and ugly. Something to be feared. And I vowed to never step foot in a nursing home again. EVER.
Part Two: Facing my fear and paying my debt
The second part of our story takes place in the late 1990’s. Now that same little Girl Scout me was grown woman me – married and enjoying a blossoming career as a physical therapist. Up to this point, I had worked in hospitals and outpatient clinics. And NO NURSING HOMES.
And then one afternoon my phone rang at home. I didn’t recognize the number, so I let our answering machine take it (1990’s, remember?). On the other end I heard a therapy recruiter leaving a message for me about a nursing home job in the area, and to please contact Such-And-Such Rehab Company if I was interested in hearing more. Ha! My career path was just fine, thank you. No need to rub elbows with scary, cold, ugly death again.
Hold the phone
TAKE THE CALL.
Wait, what?!? I don’t want to take the call. I’m not interested.
TAKE THE CALL.
The unmistakable urge – from a source outside myself – was clear as a bell.
TAKE THE CALL.
So, I dove across my bed and picked up the phone just as the recruiter was about to hang up. And I bet you can guess what happened next. Yep. I became the newest full time employee of Such-And-Such Rehab Company. In a nursing home.
A chance to redeem myself.
As it turned out, I got over my superficial fear of nursing homes fairly quickly. I actually loved that job and adored my new co-workers. My new boss was a gem who taught me lessons about therapy and life that I still fall back on today. You see, I viewed my work in that facility as a chance I’d been given. A chance from God to redeem myself from my frightening childhood Christmas caroling failure.
And redeem myself, I tried. I mean, I worked hard. I fought tooth and nail to physically rehabilitate the residents I could, and to make more comfortable the ones I couldn’t. In addition to my standard physical therapist role, I wiped butts, washed feet and vowed to be a beacon of compassionate light. And I was fairly successful at it with a few exceptions. And one of those exceptions was a resident named Berta.
Berta hated me and everybody else.
The best word I can use to describe Berta is “miserable”. She was a sour, dour old woman who hated me, the nurses and everybody else. She rarely got out of bed, and never changed out of a hospital gown despite having a closet of clean clothes. In other words, Berta was hard to like.
And guess what? It was MY job to go to Berta’s room three times every week and try to get her to do anything physical. Sit up in a chair, take a short walk, maybe do a few leg pumps in bed. Something! Anything! And Berta never did. On a good day, she would squeeze her wrinkled eye lids shut and ignore me when I entered her room. On a bad day, she would yell at me and call me awful names. Try as I might, I couldn’t reach her.
If I could just last another week or so
I knew if I hung in there long enough, Berta’s constant refusals would earn her a discharge from my physical therapy services and the torture would be over – for her AND for me. You see, her insurance company wouldn’t pay the bill if she wasn’t participating. I only had a few more days left to deal with Berta and then we’d be free of each other.
Before one of our last scheduled sessions together, I trudged up the stairs from my basement office and took a deep breath outside Berta’s door. Ashamed as I am to admit it to you, I dreaded these moments. I felt it had become a giant waste of my time and I had a million other responsibilities pressing in on me.
I exhaled slowly, counted to ten, knocked half-heartedly and pushed open Berta’s door.
A different Berta
Except Berta wasn’t laying in her bed this time like all the other times before. No, she was sitting up on the edge of her bed, swinging her legs like a little kid.
Even weirder? Her face lit up with a smile when she saw me, and she welcomed me into her space like I was some kind of dear old pal. She was practically giddy. “Oh, come in! Come in! I am so excited you are here!”
What in the world?!?!
Weirder still
Then it got weirder still. “I want you to meet my mom and dad!” At that point, Berta proceeded to introduce me very sweetly to her parents. She waved her frail arm toward an empty space of thin air, grinning like she had just won the lottery.
Now I had worked enough time with elderly folks with dementia to know that often they revert back to a much younger time in their lives. It’s a fascinating clinical part of the dementia process. Clearly Berta had crossed that line. She was in her late nineties, and her parents had been long gone for quite some time.
Still, I didn’t want to upset her, so I politely smiled back and said “nice to meet you both” to the space of thin air. I also thought I should capitalize on this opportunity to get Berta moving, so I suggested that she take a little walk with me since she was feeling so, well… perky all of a sudden.
“Oh, I can’t take a walk with you. I’m going home!”
Time to cut my losses
Okay, now I was feeling less amused and more frustrated. Berta was a permanent resident of the nursing home. There were no discharge plans, because her home had long been sold by her adult children. She had nowhere else to go. Berta obviously wasn’t oriented to her situation at all, and I obviously wasn’t going to get any work accomplished with her. AGAIN.
I decided to cut my losses and move on to my next patient. In other words, I didn’t have time to entertain this situation if we weren’t going to achieve anything productive. I initially took this job to redeem my failures, after all. So, I wished Berta well in her trip home with her parents (yeah, right) and went on my way. Dementia is a sad, sad thing.
Berta left me a gift.
When I came into work the next morning, one of my colleagues asked if I had heard about Berta yet. I assumed she fell out of bed overnight? Pulled out her own catheter? Punched one of the nurses again? Nope.
Berta had died. Only a few hours after I had left her room the day before. I think she had quite literally introduced me to her mom and dad, or at least some vision of them. And she had quite literally known she was going Home. She was excited about it with gleeful childlike expectation.
As I sat processing that news, I noticed something strange within myself. The frightening image of death I had from that Christmas caroling night had been replaced. Now I just saw Berta, swinging her legs on the edge of her bed like a carefree child. Not the least bit afraid. Happy. Glowing.
What a blessing God granted me by allowing me to witness Berta’s joy. I had been standing on holy ground that afternoon in her room, and I hadn’t even realized it in my haste to be productive. I want to live my life like Berta during our final visit. And that’s how I want to some day die my death. Unafraid. Adventurously expectant. Unexpectedly beautiful.
This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” – Romans 8:15 (MSG)
