Stop Giving Up the Room
I am terrified of spiders.
Now, I worry that when you read that you thought to yourself, “Ok, Tim is kind of scared of spiders.”
That is not what it says. Read again.
I am terrified of spiders.
I fancy myself a pretty level-headed individual. Emotionally steady. Even-keeled. All that jazz. But you insert a spider into my general vicinity and I lose all ability to remain calm, cool, collected, rational, non-hysterical.
Everyone would have gotten a great chuckle out of the fear, trepidation, and pep-talk involved in finding the cartoon image for the thumbnail of this post.
I will illustrate with a story.
When I graduated from college I lived in a one-bedroom apartment by myself. I loved that little place. One evening as I was getting ready for bed, I noticed that there was a small black dot on the wall, a few feet above my bed. I like for things to be clean, so I went into the bathroom, got a washcloth wet, and came back out to clean whatever was on the wall.
One problem.
The dot was gone.
Actually, it was not gone.
It had relocated about two feet up the wall.
My heart rate spiked. Adrenaline immediately started coursing through my veins. Critical moment here. Do I get close enough to inspect what sort of creature I am working with or do I just assume the worst and light the place on fire? You laugh, but remember what I said about losing the ability to remain non-hysterical?
Cooler heads prevailed. After all, there are other apartment units to consider. And, more importantly, I remind myself that I did not yet know what kind of creature I was dealing with. Only way to find out was to get closer.
I approached with caution.
As I did, I realized that I was definitely dealing with an arachnid. Eight legs. A million eyes. Exoskeleton. Shifty. Unpredictable. Mischievous. Malicious. Able to consume entire human beings. Also, as I got closer, I became aware that this is not a small spider. It is huge. Seems to take up the entire wall. Body the size of a silver dollar, if not three (or thirteen) times as large. Again, remember, inability to remain rational.
Bear in mind, I was holding a washcloth and could easily have ended this thing’s little spider existence. Instead, I did what any full-grown, strong, brave, courageous, adult male would do.
I let out a giant, fear-filled yell, ran out of the room, grabbed my pillow on the way out, slammed the door shut, grabbed a towel from the bathroom, stuffed it into the crack on the bottom of the door so that thing could not escape, and considered calling my parents to come help.
To my credit, I talked myself out of the last part and instead, opted to sleep on the couch for the night.
“But Tim,” you find yourself saying, “did you not realize that the spider would still be in the room in the morning and then you would no longer even know where it is?”
Please, you are being far too rational. I go full-on lizard brain, survive-at-all-costs when one of these things is within eye-sight. By the morning, I had forgotten all about it. Out of sight, out of mind, back into a normal state of mind.
I wish I could claim that this is the only time I have had a reaction like this to a spider. I could do an entire post of “Tim Fritson’s Irrational Reactions to Spiders” and keep you completely entertained. I think you get my drift, though.
I say all of that to say the following:
“Whatever your greatest fear is, stop giving it the entire room.”
Sure, you were laughing about my reaction to the spider. But now I am going to turn the table. We all do this with our fears. They take us from being pretty level-headed individuals. Emotionally steady. Even-keeled. All that jazz. But once ________ has been inserted into our general vicinity, we lose all ability to remain calm, cool, collected, rational, non-hysterical.
What do we do in response? We give that thing the whole room. Start shoving towels into the cracks. Sleep on the couch. We let it push us around, dictate our behavior, control the way we think, manipulate our emotions. It looks bigger than it is, controls an illogical percentage of us.
It is all fun and games to think of me, the spider, the bath towel shoved under the door, and a night of sleeping on the couch, but what if I start poking around a little bit on the edges of the things that tend to scare us?
Maybe you resonate with one of the following:
You fear being wrong. So you never even voice your opinion. You never try. Or when you do try, it is mostly at the things that you know you are going to be right about. Maybe you try to control the settings so that everything is happening according to the rules which govern your sense of “rightness.”
You fear being rejected and unwanted. So you go to great lengths to either wall yourself off and never get vulnerable with people. Or you swing the other way and overly attach yourself to people in hopes that they will realize that they simply cannot live without you. What seems like service to them is actually a bit of manipulation by you.
You fear being viewed as incompetent, unsuccessful, or a failure. What do you do about it? Magnify your strengths, hide your faults and blemishes, put a veneer of perfection on the outside and hope to God that no one sees reality. You whitewash that fence, knowing the yard is a mess. You make like the Wizard of Oz and live in such a way that no one pays attention to the person behind the curtain.
You fear being thought of as inadequate or insignificant. In response, you build a facade of uniqueness and individuality. You craft a social media persona, a wardrobe, a parenting style, your Spotify playlists so that everything looks special, unique, perfect, and curated. When the masses start encroaching on what was “yours,” you move on and find a new thing.
You fear being helpless. So you build up reserves of time, energy, knowledge, etc. Horde it all to yourself so in a potentially dicey situation, you have enough __________ in reserve to survive it.
You fear being caught off-guard, unaware, unprepared, or without security. So you are always prepping and planning, thinking about the worst possible outcome and building your life/plans in hopes of avoiding the risks inherent in living.
You fear being trapped or caught in emotional pain. So you avoid pain at all costs. You make discomfort the enemy. Keep your options open so as to never be trapped. Crack jokes when the mood gets even the slightest bit heavy. Dodge conversations that might bring healing or growth, because they necessitate moments of difficulty.
You fear being seen as weak or powerless, being controlled. So you domineer and dominate. When it feels like someone might have the upper hand, you swing back harder, louder, bigger. Force them to back down so you do not have to.
You fear conflict or tension. So you play peacemaker all the time. When necessary, you stuff your own feelings so as to not make waves.
Oh yeah. Those little spiders have the whole room. In fact, they have the whole apartment. We have packed up and moved out. Given them the keys and let them have the whole place while we just try to survive in a corner or something.
There is a reason scripture tells us that we can cast all of our anxieties (or cares, worries, fears, etc.) upon the Lord (I Peter 5:7). The immediate reason in the verse is that He cares for us.
And that means:
We can admit that sometimes we are wrong and He loves us anyway. In fact, we can embrace that our wrongness (or sin) is the reason that God sent Jesus to the earth and to the cross. In Jesus, God is undaunted by our wrongness.
We do not have to fear being unwanted, unloved, or unaccepted. Jesus hung on a cross as a display of the reality that we are eternally wanted and unconditionally accepted by the God of the universe.
We need not have anxiety over being viewed as incompetent or unsuccessful. Our approval in the eyes of the Lord was never about what we were capable of accomplishing, anyway.
We do not need to spend inordinate amounts of time curating unique personas to gain significance. God made us wonderfully and intentionally. And He still thinks each of us is just that.
We are never truly helpless. The creator of the universe, who owns all things and has all power at His fingertips, is on our side. In our corner.
Even when we are caught off-guard or unprepared, we can rest assured that a sovereign, omniscient God has never been surprised. And He is about to be now.
Emotional pain or difficult circumstances do not need to be avoided. We can rest assured that God is working in all things for our good.
No need to bow up and punch back at the thought of being controlled. We were never completely in control in the first place.
We need not fear a lack of peace. He has peace that surpasses understanding. And it is available even if our external circumstances are marked by a bit of turmoil.
Look, that night in the apartment, we all understand that the rational thing would have been to eliminate the spider’s presence in the room. Squash him. Or, for my spider-loving readers, put a glass over him and carefully carry him to the door, where I release him into the wild so he can go about his little spider life. Anything. Anything other than turning the room over to him.
The same is true with all of our fears.
And with the Lord there is always an antidote.
There is always a truth that pushes fear away.
He cares that much.
Honesty Hour
If you have made it this far, let me put some skin on this with a personal example. This really happened just a few days ago.
I preached a sermon that I was not very pleased with on Sunday. A couple pieces seemed like they were unclear. Stuff seemed out of order. I did not catch those things ahead of time, so first service as I was stepping through it with our congregation I could tell it was not working as I had envisioned. Sometimes it happens. I can usually tell by the way people are looking at me, how they seem to be interacting with the sermon and the text we are talking about.
There were major revisions between first and second service to try to correct what seemed off. Same thing between second and third.
Now, my great fear in life, other than spiders, is failure. Not necessarily the failure itself. I get that failing is part of life. My great fear is that you will think of me as a failure — as incompetent, incapable, unsuccessful, etc. There is shame layered into that whole equation for me. “I am a failure." “I am bad at _________ and now all these people know it.”
So, I am walking out of the church and back to my car on Sunday afternoon when those fears come calling.
“Imagine if there were visitors today, Tim. They are never coming back.”
“There were probably some people in our congregation who decided that today was their last Sunday and it is because I am bad at my job.”
“I am so dumb. I just wrote a blog post about how I prepare sermons and then I gave a terrible sermon. The internet is going to laugh at me.”
“You probably should not put any of those on the website/podcast because then the whole world will know that you are bad at your job. At least it is contained to the room right now.”
Might as well have been a spider sitting on the handle of my car door.
As I got in my car, I said out loud: “Do not give up the room, Tim.” Then I started meeting those fears with truth.
Was it the best sermon of my life? Nope.
Does that impact the way the Lord views me? Nope.
Did God love me before I ever preached a single sermon? Yes.
Will God love me if I never preach another one? Yes.
What if I only ever preach bad ones? Yes.
Did some people notice that it was not my best sermon? Probably.
Do they still love me as a human? I think so.
Do people remember every word of every sermon? As much as I want the answer to be yes, I know the answer is, “Nope.”
And just like that, I was back to sleeping in the bedroom instead of on the couch.
Cast those anxieties on the Lord. He cares.
Chase out the spiders.
Do not give up the room.
