Today’s card asks an easy question but the answers are always hard. It is from a deck I got some years ago from someone I knew in Colorado. She’d made each one by hand. It’s very simple and very direct. Today’s card asks, “What are you afraid of?”
I snorted when I saw it. You see I woke up this morning thinking I’d had a breakthrough in my phobia of cockroaches. I don’t use phobia lightly. I break out in a sweat. I cry. I run past dead ones even. I want to kill them but I’m too afraid they will crawl on me. My muscles hurt after seeing one, okay?
Yeah. Phobic.
But last night the cat and dog (the younger ones) chased a cockroach. I was on my way to bed and saw something skitter down the hallway with Vinegar Kitteh hot on its heels (all six of them–shudder.) I went into the living room shoe in hand but it FELL from the wall. I shrieked and ran.
Then I breathed. I finished a tangle. I calmed my mind. Then I went to sleep.
I. Went. To. Sleep.
Knowing there was a live cockroach in my house. I live in Texas. The chances that there are roaches in my house are huge. They seek water and I have that in my pipes. So realistically, I know…I have bugs. I just do not want to see them, thankyouverymuch.
But I woke up and knew that I’d slept–nightmare free–with a live (but on it’s way to being dead given the rapt attention of my four-leggeds) in my house. This is nothing short of a minor miracle.
So today, I’m going to face my other fears. The ones about not being good enough. The ones about no body liking me. The ones about not being smart enough. The ones about not being really anything enough.
And I’m going to set my virtual pets on those fears. I’m going to walk away from those fears while my guardians chase them down, bite them into pieces, cause them to skitter back into the deepest, darkest holes to die.
That’s what I’m going to do. What are you going to do? What are you afraid of?
Seek joy, y’all. When you fill up on joy, there’s no room for fear. Pass it on.