Bit by a Bug
What Duncan's bad experience has taught me about how God not only wants to woo us back to a safe place but helps us find new safe places, too.
This is Duncan. Duncan just turned six. Duncan is working through some fear issues.
Four nights ago, Duncan was lying on our bed at night like he has every night of his life for six years. That night, he suddenly jumped up as though something had bit him. He rapidly and fearfully glanced around and ran away. Since then, Duncan has been scared of our bed. I try to coax him back but to no avail.
In an instant, a place of safety had become a place of anxiety and fear.
This reminds me of the limerick by Madeleine Begun Kane:
Mosquitoes are on the attack.
They have bitten my arms and my back.
You may call ’em God’s creatures —
These venomous leechers —
I’m tired of being their snack.
In all seriousness, I feel terrible for Duncan. I am reminded how, in the blink of an eye, everything can change in life. Sometimes this change happens in physical ways; other times, the changes are psychological, social, emotional, or spiritual.
To me, there is nothing more sorrowful than having something that once felt safe and steady become moveable and unreliable.
Death does this. Abuse does this. Pain does this. Evil does this. Sin does this. It takes a good and tarnishes it.
There is nothing more sorrowful than having something that once felt safe and steady become moveable and unreliable.
I am reminded of C.S. Lewis’s brilliant “The Screwtape Letters.” In it, Screwtape (the senior devil) is talking to his nephew, Wormwood, and says,
“Whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out...”
I cannot say what is going through Duncan’s little mind. A bug bit him and now anxiety seems to be his guiding star. So he has run from his former place of safety.
He has — hopefully just temporarily — forgotten that until this moment, the bed was a place of peace and rest and security. It is like anxiety and fear covered up six years of good.
We do this, don’t we? We are hurt and we turn away and run. We are lonely and we seek refuge in things that won’t fulfill. We are angered and we put up walls so that we won’t be angered again.
We jump off the bed of what was once safe and good. And sometimes this means we run from God. We begin to not care or notice or desire him anymore. And the longer we run, the harder it can be to find our way back.
Jacob Jumping Off the Bed
Last week I talked about how the Jewish priest Eli did not act as he should have when the woman Hannah was praying for a baby boy. He jumped to a conclusion and made a mockery of what a church leader should be.
I must confront another biblical character this week: Jacob. Here’s the context of Genesis 34: Dinah, the only daughter of Leah and Jacob, is raped by a much older man. (It is important to note that many historians mark her age at the time to be around 13.) When the rapist wants to marry her, Jacob agrees, but his sons (Dinah’s brothers) are livid over what happened. They seek vengeance against the rapist and his people.
Now, murder is not good, and that is what Dinah’s brothers do. But neither is Jacob’s response to his sons after they take revenge:
“You have brought trouble on me by making me obnoxious to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land.”
You read that right. Instead of standing with his sons as they sought to defend their violated sister, he chided them for how their actions might cause problems for Jacob down the line.
Their response was swift:
“But they replied, ‘Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?’”
The bug bit them all. Things were no longer safe. A bad thing had happened.
Jacob’s anxiety over what happened made him want to capitulate and marry off his only daughter to a rapist. He wanted to run from the bug that bit him. He didn’t think the hard and right thing was worth fighting for. His sons, on the other hand, believed that the safe and secure place was worth fighting for.
Again, I am very anti-murder. I am only making a point, and the point is this: Instead of running and fleeing from the bad thing that occurred, what if Jacob didn’t let anxiety guide him? What if he didn’t try to marry his daughter off to a rapist? What if he saw the bad thing for what it was and fought against it instead by denying the marriage?
Dinah’s bad thing was far bigger than Duncan’s bad thing. Maybe your bad thing — your abuse, your loss, your hopelessness — seems really big, too. You may not want to try out the safe place again. You may not care to go to church or believe in God or open your Bible. Your fear and anger may feel too great to fight to find faith again after the bad thing.
The In-Between Place of Grace
This, friends, is the in-between place.
As much as I want Duncan to come back to the bed and find safety again, I can’t force him. I can gently speak to him and remind him that even when bugs bite, the place of security still stands strong. I can remind him that even in this place that holds a bad, hurtful memory, love still dwells.
And this is true for us as well. We were once safe and strong in our knowledge that God loved us and had good for us. But now we are far from that proverbial bed. We can’t seem to make our way to God without the bad memory clouding our sights and experiences.
If this is you — if you are running from God because of a bad thing — then let me give you a glimpse into the truth of what is happening here in the Nichols’s house:
Here is Duncan right now. He isn’t in the bed, but he is two rooms away, snoozing away beside me as I write. I like to think that God does this for us, too. He knows that he can begin to create a safe place anywhere for us when we’ve been hurt. At any moment, he can come near to us and sit and help us to reimagine and once again feel secure, loved, and whole.
I can’t make Duncan come back to bed again without feeling anxious.
But I’ll sure try.
And in the meantime, I’ll sit with him in other places and create safe places there, too.
Can you begin to imagine a new safe place where God will meet you? Maybe as you lay on that hammock he will find you. Or as you sketch the babbling brook. Or as you listen to that song in D-Minor.
And maybe one day, you’ll hop back into that once-safe place and find that although the bad memory lingers, love still exists there after all.
Much love,
💚 Laurie
This story of Jacob and his sons is such a rough one! It's almost a kidnapping of Dinah. Jacob seems so overpowered by his sons here, it's like the end of his leadership over his family. Did he abdicate? Why? So sad. One of the things I most love/hate about the Bible is that there's very little commentary about the story. You just have to keep reading wait for the outcomes - lots like life. I love that God will meet us anywhere/everywhere, may we be open to hearing!
Lots of good stuff here, Laurie.