The Madman and the King

Headlights swept the driveway, revealing mist curling up from the ice and big drops of rain that covered it in a silvery slickness. A white Bronco slowed at my approach. It was one of the neighbors and she was looking for her son. He was insane and he had wandered off again. Had I seen him? No, I told her, I had not.

I hurried into the house, shaking rain off my coat.

"I'm home", I yelled.

"Good! We were worried", my father answered from the second floor. I regretted giving my parents cause to worry and wondered what had possessed me to stay out until 1 AM on a night like this.

I paused, my hand on the doorknob. A half formed concern entered my mind. The door was not locked when I entered the house. Perhaps I should check the basement for--suddenly, I knew he was there. My hand tightened and froze on the doorknob. As he stepped out of the shadows I was paralyzed by fear.

The mad man's eyes were pits of darkness, a black so deep they fairly shone with the antithesis of light. He clutched a hammer.

I hoped the dog would do something to protect me, but it was too friendly. It wagged its tail and bounded between the crazed man and myself. The dog's movement had a frantic energy. Perhaps it sensed something was wrong, but the golden retriever would never attack a person.

As the man advanced I tried to scream. Once, twice, three times, but my throat was frozen, the breath locked in my lungs. A voice in my head said: If you do not scream, you will die. No one will know.

With all my strength I forced air upwards, straining against the anvil weight on my chest. It squeezed through my vocal chords, out of my wooden jaws.

"Aaa-iii--eeee!"

Screaming out loud jolted me out of sleep, but in the split second of waking, terror gripped my entire being. I did not know what was real and what was not. In that fraction of time, the mad man was outside my bedroom door.

I expected to hear my parents rushing up the stairs to see what was wrong, and was crushed to realize that they hadn't heard me.

You're twenty-eight, said a derisive voice.

I'm still afraid, I answered.

Though I was fully awake, shadows of fear still lingered. My feet were on solid ground but fear doesn't always submit to reality. It's a lie, it comes from our Enemy.

"Jesus, King of angels..."

Some people say religion is a crutch, a prop for our human frailty. I agree with them. Swinging the censer, lighting candles, chanting to exorcise fear of the unknown is a crutch.

Jehovah is not a crutch. He is a Heavenly Father who never sleeps and is always ready to banish His children's nightmares with His presence.

I'm His daughter, it's a relationship. That's what I'd like to say to the religion-is-a-crutch people who equate Christianity with religion. And I'd ask them if they ever woke from a bad dream, terrified, heart laboring, wanting their mom or dad.

"Yeah?" I'd say. "At your age?"