WHAT SCARES YOU?
By
Ada Brownell
How often were you paralyzed by
fear in your youth?
The first time I remember a snake
of worry wiggling into my brain I was about age 4 and my sister told me Indians
used to live on the same ground where my family lived.
But that wasn’t nearly as scary as
the realities I lived with growing up during World War II. I remember one summer night when the town’s
sirens interrupted our evening, screaming the warning. We didn’t know whether enemy planes approached
in the night sky, or if it was a blackout drill.
Our large family scurried to turn
out lights. We felt our way to the back porch where moonlight illuminated
things around us and gave us a view of the sky.
My heart pounded as we waited
quietly, listening. Sometimes I did hear airplanes. Perhaps they checked to see
whether people obeyed the warning, but I was sure they must be bombers.
We had numerous blackouts after
that.
Then came the years when the Soviet
Union threatened with atomic bombs. Many new homes came with bomb shelters. We
read about how difficult it would be to survive a nuclear blast.
Fear came, too, to many who
expected our nation to be taken by communists, and preachers asked, “Are you willing
to die for your faith?”
I had moments of paralyzing fear.
My family of ten, however, beginning with my oldest sister, Marjorie, began to
dedicate their lives to God shortly after I was born. Each of the older
siblings and mom and dad quickly followed. I accepted Jesus as my Savior at age
5 and grew up knowing God loved me and had a plan for my life. There is a peace
that comes with that beyond understanding (Philippians 4:7) and that made a
difference for me, even during the most frightening times.
I discovered as an adult that no
matter what you go through, God can speak, “Peace. Be still,” just as he did to
calm a storm when his disciples were in danger of shipwreck (Mark 4:39). Jesus
gave peace when I lost my parents and our daughter became a cancer victim. I’ve
found supernatural comfort in crises with my own health, in times of financial
worries, and when facing a tremendous challenges as a parent and in my years as
a newspaper reporter.
In my book for teens, Joe the Dreamer: the Castle and the
Catapult, when Joe’s parents disappear he has moments of paralyzing fear. A
huge man breaks into his house while Joe and his sister hide in the crawl
space. They have to live with an unbelieving uncle who thinks Joe is mentally
ill because he slips into the skin of Bible characters during his dreams and
shouts out in the night.
Yet, Joe has experienced supernatural peace,
and tries to stay in God’s Word so somehow he’ll have faith for his parents’
safe return. He hooks up with a gang dedicated to solving and preventing crime.
The teens use harmless things like a pet skunk, water, noise, sand, rope, and
they are determined to find Joe’s parents despite knowing the enemy uses real
bullets and won’t hesitate to kill.
But Joe has become the target of a
radical group that hopes to erase Christianity from America.
Joe’s uncle sends him to a
psychiatrist. It delights the doctor to put Joe in the juvenile unit of a
mental hospital because the man leads the radical organization uses threats
again Joe and his sister trying to persuade Joe’s father to give them a software
program that could stop difficult-to-control seizures. He wants to change it so
it will cause seizures in influential
Christians.
The group snatched Joe’s parents and keeps
them imprisoned at a nearby castle, building a wall.
As with any Christian, Joe’s faith
is tested. The book is available at http://buff.ly/XeqTvH
