Leaving Fear at the Door

 As parents we are to teach our kids things, like right from wrong, how to tie a shoe, and how to brush their teeth in a way that won’t result in endless cavities. What you’re not told though, when you become a parent for the first time, is that these small hairless humans, that you now call your own, will be teaching you about things greater than how to properly move a toothbrush.

Spring time has now rolled around, and the insects have started coming out to smell the roses. I have become concerned of what my bee fearing daughter’s reaction would be. Today is a pleasant day outside, winter is over and the sun has returned to shine its warm face on ours.

It is a perfect spring day to go outside. Today is also the day that I am longing to see if fear has run its course, and if truth has replaced the lies in my daughter’s life. She has been awake now for about an hour, breakfast has been consumed and teeth have been “properly brushed” while I have been typing on these worn keyboard keys.

She is unaware of how hopeful and nervous I have become while doing so, wondering if this spring and summer will be like the last. I ask if she wants to go outside for a while and play while I finish my typing. I can see some hesitation in her big brown eyes, and the way she is looking out the screen door at the backyard, scoping out for any sign of a revengeful bee, but she bends down and puts on her polka dot rain boots, the ones she always used to wear outside, and exits out the screen door without turning back.   

As I turn to the window and watch her starting to walking around our backyard, I see her tense face relax as she has realizes something I have been trying to tell her for months. The bees hadn’t formed an army during the winter months of hibernation in plan to take her down. I see her start to walk around freely, just like she used to outside, now picking a bouquet of her favorite flowers. My mommy heart melts. 

This summer is going to be different. I have my happy, outside loving, daughter back whom I predict will basically live outside this summer. What a change. There’s nothing to fear but fear itself. If only my daughter could of realized the truth in that old saying the summer she was afraid of bees. Instead she had let fear run her life, and I kept thinking of how crazy it was for her to have a fear that was empty, this lie she believed that bee were out to get her.

It has made me stop and think though, as I now see her running around our backyard free of fear. What fear is in my life that I believe is true and “out to get me,” but really it is an empty lie and there really is nothing to fear but the fear itself. I leave behind my computer for now and go outside for the rest of the day to be with my carefree daughter, leaving my fears at the door.