Low Batteries

I had nightmares last night. Nightmares about home invasions, robbers and killers.
It's all very melodramatic this irrational fear of killers and robbers and I'm trying to get over it.
I woke up so early this morning it was still the middle of the night. I woke up with the nightmares tangled in my head. I had a killer headache and stumbled to the kitchen for medicine.
Standing in the brightly lit kitchen with all the lights between my bed and the fridge burning I heard it. A chirping noise coming from all around me. I looked towards the basement stairs and heard it. I heard it coming from the hallway and the still darkened corners of the living room.
My first instinct was that it was a secret code between a team of would be killers that were hunching in the corners with semi automatic guns and red laser scopes. A code warning that she was awake and they needed to remain hidden.
I gulped my medicine down and sprinted back to my bed, where killers cannot harm me. I slept the next hour or so with all the lights in the house on to scare away the darkness that holds the killers.
When I woke this morning for good and walked into the kitchen after showering and getting dressed I realized the chirping was my smoke detector. The batteries are dying and need to be replaced. I wasn't surprised, in the cool light of morning, that there were no killers. I even nervously laughed to myself as I walked out the door, sneaking a glance behind me just to be sure there was no masked man hiding in the stairwell.

I've stopped watching CSI, Criminal Minds, true crime stories on news magazine shows. I've stopped watching scary or even suspenseful movies and I change the channel when previews for such things come on. I've stopped reading scary books too.
But I can't stop my memories. My memories of all the Friday the 13th movies I've watched, the Stephen King books I've read and those years of my obsession with all things serial killer. They won't go away. Imprinted on my mind are these images of terror, mayhem, murder and fright.
I know there are no killers in my house. I know that if there were the lights wouldn't deter them and neither would the cushy expanse of my bed.
But I also know that killers strike everywhere. That in a sense no place, no small town or cozy well manicured home is immune from tragedy and death.

Sometimes I think, this is how I look to God. This silly girl running around pretending that she has control over what happens to and around her. Sometimes I think that when I ask for forgiveness he forgives me but has a hard time stopping the memories of my sin and disobedience from coming back to the forefront.
I end up trying to make God small. I try to fit him into this me-type god that thinks, acts, and says things like I do, like the people that have hurt me do.
I'm trying to stop. I'm trying to open my eyes wider to see this big God that I have seen do miraculous things.
Because I don't want a small god, a god I can put in my pocket and carry around and take out when it's most convenient for me.
I want a HUGE God, an inconvenient God that shakes up my life. I want to see where the pieces he's shaken up have settled and I want to stay out on the edge of this limb, outside of my comfort zone.
I don't want the memory of when that happened, I want it everyday.


Posts that may only be slightly related:
Denise
Impossible
Sandwich