The Consequences of Fear

Most of my life I have had nightmares. When I was little I used to have night terrors and scare my parents. One night I actually threw myself out of bed, still asleep, and knocked out one of my front teeth on the nightstand. I have actually woken myself up in the middle of the night because I was screaming and can't remember what I was dreaming about. But, on the flip side, I enjoy suspense and mystery stories. Combine these two things and you get someone with a bit of an overactive imagination who scares herself. I can't actually read the first part of "The Fellowship of the Ring" at night. And, if the sun sets before Frodo and the boys get to Tom Bombadil's house, I am convinced Ring Wraiths are outside my bedroom window, sniffing for me. I am completely aware that this cannot happen, and have read The Lord of the Rings more than 20 times, but I am still convinced, in those moments on the run with Frodo, that I am going to be sniffed and killed. Now for the funny story....

Last Friday, I got home from work around 11:30PM. No big deal--it's typical of a closing shift where I work. What I didn't expect was to be home alone. I didn't know my roommate was going to be out of town and was unprepared to be home alone. Normally, this is not that big of a deal. I am an adult and enjoy being alone in my house; it is cathartic and rejuvenating to spend time alone. I did normal getting ready for bed stuff and checked all the doors and turned off the lights. Then, the weird noises started.

In the light of day, the weird noises are normal fridge-running and house-settling noises. But when it's dark and after midnight, they are someone-is-breaking-in-so-they-can-kill-me noises. So I turn all the lights back on and check every room in the house to make sure I am alone. Which I was. I turn all the lights back off and go into my room. As I am in the process of shutting the door, I hear another noise that freaks me out a bit. I have the brilliant idea to lock my bedroom door because, logically, if someone breaks in they still have to come through my bedroom door lock to get me. (This made much more sense at 1:30AM.) I lock my door--push the lock in and shut the door. No big deal!

45 minutes later--I am much more calm, reading my book and I realize I forgot to brush my teeth. I get out of bed, walk to the door, turn the knob, and NOTHING HAPPENS! The knob won't turn! The locking mechanism had frozen! I tried everything I could think to do. I tried as hard as I could to turn the knob in either direction. Still nothing. At this point I am feeling a tiny bit panicky because I have realized that I am trapped in my bedroom, in my house, ALONE! Normally, I have a hammer and screwdrivers in my bedroom (don't ask) but I had been working on something in the front room of the house and, therefore, had no tools to pop the hinges so I could take the door off the frame.

I look around the room and see one of my crochet hooks. It is thin and fits inside the hinges to push the pin out. Problem: I still do not have a hammer with which to hit the crochet hook. But I do have several pairs of shoes. I hit the hook with the heel of my shoe and nothing happens. By this time it's around 2:30AM and I am exhausted. So I crawl into bed and go to sleep because there was nothing else I could do at that time of night. (There are some people in my life who should be so glad I didn't have a panic attack and call them to bring me tools at 2:30AM.)

In the end, someone did come and rescue me from my self-inlficted imprisonment. It was very nice of them. And, to answer the obvious question of why didn't I crawl out the window: my window is too high for me to crawl back into. Plus, I am already a bit nutty when I am home alone and it is late at night; I really do not need to know that there is a way to break into my house without a key. Did I also mention that, even if I had had my keys in my bedroom, I wouldn't have been able to open any door in the house because we have security bolts on all the doors? Well, we do and our house is like Fort Knox. So basically, I locked myself into the vault in Fort Knox because a thump scared me witless.

How does this apply to life? What lesson can be learned? As I was in my room pondering the ridiculousness of my situation and why these things seem to happen to ME, I thought of Neal A. Maxwell's last BYU Devotional address entitled "Free to Choose?" He talks about choices we make in life and one thing he said really stuck with me: "No decision is a decision. Delay is a delusion..." How many times in life do we make decisions, or not make decisions as it were, because we are afraid?

Personally, I have issues with blessings in my life. For too long, there has been nothing but trial after trial that when I am happy and witnessing personal miracles right and left, I start to feel like life is too good. I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I realized, as I sat in my room, trapped because of a decision I made out of fear of the unknown, that too many times in life we make decisions because we are afraid to take risks. Or, in my case, because we are afraid that the happiness and joy in our lives will be taken away. But without those fears, and making decisions in spite of them, we would not experience the joy that comes from acting on faith.

There must be opposition in all things or else we would never learn. How could we appreciate the beauty and majesty of a sunrise if we had never experienced a night with no light? How would we understand what true joy is if there weren't moments of deep sorrow? Would we appreciate how hard we labor in our lives if there weren't moments of relaxation? Would any of us be here on Earth if our parents had been too scared to talk to each other? What an amazing risk that is--talking to someone! How could we ever appreciate true friendship if we never opened up and talked to the people we call 'friend?'

In conclusion: Thank you, lock, for being old and broken. You taught me much more than I realized I needed to learn. And you did it in a way that I understood. For those of you who want to know: I have no door knob on my door. My roommate has declared that I need someone to marry me or she will have to live with me until we both die because it has become laughingly obvious that I could not handle living alone. Thus, for the moment, I have lost my doorknob privileges.