At the root of my fear …

It unmasks me to admit it and I am rightfully mortified by the sin that remains within me … but, yet again, it is true: I have lived a testimony of utter failure before my (best friend and) non-Christian sister, Kali.

It happened at one of my fall events …

IMPORTANT NOTE: I can only tell you this story now because, for the first time since 1997, I am not flying 75,000+ miles this year. And I didn’t fly even for this event last fall. Instead, I am practicing law again and happily declining almost all speaking, writing, and conciliation invitations. So please don’t try to figure out where this bedbug–or NOT bedbug situation happened, OK? Pretty please? Thanks and back to the story …

Everything was going fine as I prepared for my first teaching session. I was checked into a lovely room. I had all of the information I needed on the schedule. I had lots of water bottles. The A/V/tech stuff was all taken care of. There were just a few minutes left for me to do that final primp of hair and makeup and head out to meet the women at my first teaching session.

And then I saw the bugs. On the wall. BY MY HEADBOARD.

ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTE: I’m usually not that concerned about bugs. I don’t like them, but I don’t live in abject fear of them. EXCEPT FOR BEDBUGS. Any person who has flown over a million frequent flyer miles has read the articles and heard the dire warnings about how AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL bedbugs are. Once you are infested with them, you carry them home and spread them around and they are INCREDIBLY hard to get rid of. So yes, bedbugs scare the livin’ life out of me and I routinely check the bedbug registry online to see if the hotels I am scheduled to stay in have ever had reports of bedbugs.

So what did I do when there was a dead shell of a bug and then a LIVE bug and then ANOTHER live bug, wriggling, moving, squirming right near where I was supposed to put my HAIR and my HEAD and SLEEP for the night? Initially, I did OK. I called the front desk to see if they had ever had bedbugs (while simultaneously checking the bedbug registry online). I took a photo of the bugs (and even a brief movie of them moving) before I handed them over to an apologetic young lady from housekeeping who assured me that she was taking a class on bugs and these were DEFINITELY not bedbugs. (Not that assuring to me.) I looked up every google image of bedbugs I could and as the walls of the hotel room started to swirl, I gradually convinced myself that even though they didn’t LOOK that much like bedbugs, they probably WERE bedbugs and then. Of course. I totally panicked.

Adrenaline flooded my system and I began to cry. I called Fred and he couldn’t even understand a word I was saying because I wracked with sobs. When I finally got my breath enough to talk, he assured me that they probably WEREN’T bedbugs and that even if they were, I would be OK. (Words words words. Comforting care. Gentle reminders that God loved me and would take care of me. Nope. Nada. Not getting through. See? Adrenaline really DOES kill theology. In that moment, it was as though all of that good, biblical, Christ-centered doctrine I believed had skittered right out the window. Not unlike the bugs that were skittering near. my. pillow.)

Now the time was rapidly disappearing. My calm “30 minutes to fix my  hair and makeup and to pray” had devolved into 10 minutes to just throw clothes on and make sure I had my Bible and I STILL wasn’t done shaking yet.

SIDE NOTE FOR MY MALE READERS: It is very hard to put on makeup while your hands are shaking.

So THEN did I finally do the godly thing and, you know, pray? No no no. I did what comes naturally to me in moments of panic or great stress … I called my best friend. Yes, I KNOW that best friend SHOULD BE Jesus, but I’m just being honest. In that moment, I didn’t dial the ol’ Heavenly telephone number, I called my sister.

And she was sweet, patient, loving, supportive … and then she utterly unmasked me by asking one question:

“Tara? Isn’t it true that what is MOST upsetting to you about these bugs is that they might cost your family an unspecified, large amount of MONEY?”

Yes. Yes, it was.

I didn’t really care THAT much about having a bug or two crawl across my pillow or be in my hair. I didn’t like it. But I could bear it. (I even had that happen once at an event in Florida YEARS AGO … I cockroach skittered right across my pillow right as I was about to lie down on it. It was FREAKY! But I remember telling myself: “Think, Tara, about the MISSIONARIES around the world who are suffering WAY WORSE than a little bug or two in their room. Let it go! Trust God! It probably WON’T climb in your ear and get stuck in your ear canal, wriggling away. You can bear up under this.”) And I turned off the light and went to sleep.

BUT BEDBUGS??!! It wasn’t the bug problem. It was the money problem. It was, as always, the HEART problem. Finances are extremely tight right now for our family. We don’t have a lot of margin. What I was MOST afraid of in that moment was the hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars our family MIGHT have to spend trying to eradicate a bedbug infestation. I felt responsible! I felt like I needed to protect my family from that great financial risk. I felt my throat tighten and my body heave with sobs NOT because of bugs, but because of money.

And that, my friends, is how I (finally!) repented.

God used my (wonderful, loving, insightful and really-knows-me) sister to show me my heart and the false god wherein I was putting my trust. And once I saw it, I could turn away from it:

“I turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.” 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10

In the end, hooray!, it all worked out. I threw some makeup on (not a lot of eye liner—too hard to do with shaky hands); made it through the first session; re-evaluated things when I got back to my room; ended up staying in the room for the night; got a REALLY encouraging email from Fred on one of my flights home wherein he included the photo above—of the EXACT type of bug that had been in my room (a carpet beetle) right next to an obviously very different bug (a bedbug); and, you know, we didn’t have to give every last penny of our savings over to Orkin.

Ah, fear. Can be helpful in the right situation. But often, it just makes us really stupid because it shunts all of our bloodflow away from our brain and towards our arms and legs in a fight-or-flight-but-not-a-lot-of-good-theology way.

With love from your bedbug-free friend,
Tara B.

[A re-post from 2012]