I shall fear no evil - Entry 4 - September 26, 2007

There is a house set back a hundred yards or so from the road that takes you to my mother's house. Its an old house that looks like so many of the houses from the late 1800's-early 1900's that you see scattered around Georgia. There's the obligatory rusted tin roof laid thinly atop gray cracked boards. There's the door frame, long without a door, situated in between a four paned window on either side. Out front there is the small porch where corn was once shucked and peas were once snapped. The portion of roof overhanging the porch is supported shakily by two posts that are bent like the knees of the old folks who died and left the house to die as well. Its a true southern relic but to be honest I haven't seen it look like I just described it in almost three years. That's because in no more than one summer it was overtaken and completely hidden by kudzu. The spring before the kudzu claimed its latest I kept meaning to pull over to the side of the road and snap a couple of black and whites of it. That same fall there was nothing to snap but an ocean of green with a house shaped mass in the middle of it.
I don't know if you've ever been in one of those abandoned houses but you wouldn't describe them as warm and cozy. Most of them are downright creepy. The first time I noticed that the old house near my mom was no longer visible I immediately thought about how much more frightening it would be to get into that house and even in the brightest part of the day not be able to see a thing without a flashlight. The creaking boards, the musty smells, the unidentifiable noises would probably send you packing pretty quickly and justifiably so. And yet this is exactly the kind of darkness I live in.
When I sat down with a Psychologist recently I told her that I'd been having trouble with fear. I understated how big the problem was because I didn't want her to lock me away that very moment. But the truth is that over the past few years I have developed an irrational apprehension about almost everything. To help you understand it I'll give you an example. Recently when I came home after being gone for two days I found all the windows in the house open. Most people would have said something like, "Man, somebody could have broken in here," and then moved on without giving it a second thought. My reaction was to assume that every creak and thump I heard that night was someone hiding somewhere in the house waiting to do horrible things to me and the boys. I know those kinds of things can happen and sometimes they do but what is the likelihood that its going to happen to me? I don't personally know any statisticians but I would think if I did they would say I was more likely to spontaneously change species while eating a hamburger than be brutalized by a nut job.
Up until early last year I used to watch a lot of horror films and I really enjoyed them. Movies like The Ring or The Grudge or The Shining or Night of the Living Dead (the original of course which is the scariest movie of all time) were too outrageous to ever actually happen and so, I thought, they were safe to watch. But adult models on the internet weren't likely to ever sleep with me either and yet somewhere in my addiction (i.e. my fantasy life) I began to believe that even it they weren't it seemed like they were. And so as my addiction to the fantasy grew my ability to distinguish between possible and impossible began to weaken. Mostly my fear was nothing more than what doctors call an Anxiety Disorder which basically means that you worry about everything. I would hear a report on the news about a child who died after his parent unknowingly left them in a hot car all day and it would stick with me and I would become more careful to the point of being irrationally obsessive. Not exactly nuts but not a very fun way to live either.
And then my son got really sick at two weeks old and almost died last November. Something totally "outrageous" that only happened to other people happened to me and it became a little harder for me to say, "nobody is going to kidnap my kids or kill my family," or, "the house isn't going to burn down and kill everyone in it except me". Anything horrible that could happen to me became something I worried would happen to me. To make matters so much worse, and this is the first time I've publicly talked about it, something did happen that almost pushed me right over the edge. The weeks preceding Memorial Day I was doing really well spiritually and I was finally starting to recover from almost losing my son. I had developed a relationship with a guy who produced a very progressive Christian Podcast and he had agreed to promote my blog on his website. The blog was going to be a place where people who had either been burned by the church or who had done a little of the burning themselves could heal. My wife was at work and the boys were in bed and so I sat down in the quietness to write the first post. The title of the blog was The Burn Unit and as I was downloading a picture of a burned down church I noticed something in the corner of my eye. I instinctively turned and to my horror saw that the front porch of my neighbors house was engulfed in flames. The thing I remember the most about those first moments is that the fire looked manageable except that the bushes which went up with a literal poof seemed like they could be an accelerator. There was something beautiful and gut wrenching about the whole tableau. In the time it took to grab my cell phone, dial 911, and run down the stairs to my front door the entire front of the house had become a forty foot wall of raging fire.
Because it was 11:30 on a school night I assumed that everyone was in bed. This only added to the chaos of the situation because the 11 year old daughter's bedroom was located directly above the porch. I immediately ran out of my front door towards the house screaming to the 911 operator that "I'm sure she's in there". I don't know if any of you have ever witnessed a house fire that claimed the entire house but there are certain sounds. Gas can's exploding, wood crackling, and several different noise all of which sound like screaming children. As I stared at the room above the porch and I heard just such a scream I went white and stopped dead in my tracks. I had always hoped that in a situation like this I would be heroic but as I desperately searched the house for any way in I realized that I could not be that hero. I stood there and watched what I thought was the demise of my neighbors and I felt like I was falling fast through layer after layer of the earth's crust towards the molten center. The 911 operator kept assuring me that I needed to stay at my house with my kids, which was true because sparks were falling on mine and my neighbors roof's and it was really really dry this year and windy that night. I slowly slipped back behind my front door and coward there for several minutes until I saw three people walk around from behind the house. It was the family and my feeling of helplessness turned first to relief and then quickly to shame. "I should have at least tried to help them," I kept telling my wife who agreed with the emergency operator that nothing could have been done. I didn't sleep that night. I didn't sleep much or well for the next few nights.
In the midst of the melodrama we decided to spend Memorial Day weekend in south Georgia camping. It seemed like a good idea to spend the weekend away but our first night camping I heard voices all night and became irrationally afraid of people wanting to slice our tent open and kill all of us. As if sinking into paranoia weren't a big enough drag we woke the next morning to find the entire inside of our tent covered with millions of ants. The baby and our two year old had a couple of bites on their legs and feet but it could have been so much worse and in my mind it was. I couldn't tell the difference anymore. We stayed with my mom for a few days after that. Everyone kept telling me, "well, at least no one was killed in the fire," to which I replied, "well, for ten minutes I believed they were so how do I process that". No one had any quick fixes so I turned to porn.
I am telling you this ridiculously long story for one reason and here it is: even in my crazed state I noticed that the more I looked at porn the more detached from reality and terrified to be alone I became. I asked my wife why some people could look at that situation and be happy that their neighbors escaped with their lives but I looked at the situation and all I could think about was how close they came to not getting out. Again, there were no answers and no quick fixes and again I turned to porn. I was starting to realize that something in me was broken. That's when I went and saw the Phsycologist. She told me that although viewing porn seemed like a harmless activity where no one got hurt it was fueling the fires of my phobias by blurring the lines between fantasy and reality.
Like I said in my last post I am feeling better. It is truly amazing that for every day I am sober I feel that much less afraid. I would never have come to the realization that my addiction was feeding my fear without that Phsycologist. Which further confirms that honestly exposing the darkness within us to those around us will bring healing. The claws of my fear may have been dulled but they are harp enough to still do great harm. I find comfort and courage in speaking the words from 1 John 4:4, "greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world" into the darkness. I know this post has been painfully long and I'm not sure how many people will be able to muddle through to the end but its been helpful for me to write it out like this. I still don't have all the answers or any quick fixes but this time I am not turning to porn. I am turning to you my brothers and sisters in Christ and as consequently I think I am turning a corner. As always, thank you for reading this and I hope you are encouraged and emboldened. Pray for me and please let me know how I can pray for you.