the unknown

I think it's true that we are most afraid of what we don't know.
At least I am.  It's hard to ever admit fear, actually, but feeling it and acknowledging it are most likely to occur when the object of fear is a mystery.  It's more about the anticipation, expecting the worst that insinuates fear and ultimately leads to a paralysis of the mind which drops you smack in the middle of that fear and whether realized or not you are stuck there...living the fear.

Why all the dreary?

The barometric pressure in the air? The forecast? Maybe my subconscious perceives an intended threat to my equilibrium?  Maybe i'm just getting older and, thus, freaking out more regularly about potentially life-threatening scares facing my family members.

So my dad is the strong, quiet type...the kind of man who has worked hard his entire life... i mean really worked- growing up on a small dairy farm working the tobacco fields, birthing baby calves, picking, growing, stripping, harvesting- from sun-up to sun-down.  As a father he didn't let up, working in the elements, scaling walls, hundreds of feet in the air on scaffolding- in cranes- beneath the surface of the earth, inside mines and on top of enormous structures... he was superman- my superman.  He was prepared to meet the world's challenges head on, ready for anything, never too tired or too busy, never gave up, never even considered it.  This dad, my superman, has never been really sick, never missed work, never slept in, never stopped going...like a race without a finish line, he knows one speed.

This week he received some rather questionable test results, and of corse, my sick mind immediately jumped to his death bed, envisioned his last days, his last moments...skipping, entirely, the test results, the optimism that honors his lifetime of commitment and work ethic.  I would be lying if I said I didn't worry about my parents health or that I was prepared to deal with any major life-altering circumstances.  I don't know that one is ever prepared, and I guess I can't honestly say that I don't halfway expect to get phone calls of this nature on a daily basis, but I think those are just paranoid benign thoughts that keep our feet on the ground rather than 6th sense-type feelings that give us a leg up on equipping ourselves for the worst.  I really don't ever want to be prepared for the worst, though because i've seen it, I have walked alongside of it and have prayed to get as far away from is as possible yet still facing it day after day until it gets the best of us, all of us.

Faith.  I'm thankful that my faith is strong enough today to lend me a deep breath, a clear throat, a quiet head and a night's sleep.  May the grace of God surround us all amidst the worries of our lives whether as real as the blood tests reveal or as insignificant as the mind strings of deceit would warrant.  May grace extend far and wide this day and every day.