I have an ongoing relationship with fear. It’s not the kind of fear that leaves my heart pounding or turns my stomach inside out. It’s much more subtle.
It’s the kind of fear that whispers so softly that I’m the only one who can hear it. The doubt. The second guessing. Not knowing the outcome. Fear is the source of all of it, and I’ve been working a lot on facing my fear.
Oddly enough, I found myself encouraged and inspired today by a furry house guest we had a couple of years ago. We were in the thick of the pandemic and probably a little starved for entertainment, so when my daughter agreed to hamster-sit for one of her good friends, we enthusiastically welcomed Honey Bun into our home.
She had a fun little cage with all the best hamster toys and exercise apparatuses. There was a small opening in her cage just above the latch to the door, but the hole had been snuggly sealed with a piece of pink foam to thwart any attempts of escaping.
“How hard can it be?” we wondered. “She eats three sunflower seeds a day and sleeps for what, 21 hours? It’s fine,” we agreed.
And it was fine. Everything was completely fine. Honey Bun was a delightful house guest. She didn’t make any noise at all and seemed to approve of her accommodations in the laundry room.
One afternoon, we noticed that her exercise wheel didn’t seem to be turning properly. Unsure of how to fix it, we figured she still had plenty of entertainment with her colorful tunnels. Unfortunately we underestimated the importance of a properly functioning hamster wheel.
After a few days without her wheel, Honey Bun reached the point of extreme boredom and figured out how to pick at the pink foam until it fell to the bottom of the cage, leaving a hole just big enough for a small hamster to squeeze through.
We’ll never know for sure exactly how the next few hours unfolded. But as best we could tell, she made her big break in the middle of the night, long after we had all gone to sleep. She made the long trek from the laundry room (whose door was closed), across the open loft area of our upstairs, made a hard left at the stairs, and entered our bedroom (whose door was also closed).
This was noteworthy for several reasons. First, our loft area is wide open, surrounded only by a railing that is fine for humans, but could spell disaster for a hamster. If she had wandered too far to the right, we would have been dealing with a scenario equivalent to a human skydiving without a parachute.
Second, there was a sleeping dog in our bedroom. Although she was 10 years old, her senses were on point. If Honey Bun had scurried along the left side of the bed instead of the right, she would have found herself nose to nose with a dog who didn’t appreciate being startled in the middle of the night.
Somehow Honey Bun ended up in our master bathroom where she settled into her final destination: the toilet room. She was a fearless little rodent whose wanderlust got the best of her.
There is no way to know how long the journey took, or how treacherous the path. She did manage to find some entertainment in the form of shredding a roll of toilet paper.
Imagine Honey Bun’s surprise when, at the early morning hour of 5:30 am, the door to her hideout flung open and she found herself looking up at a man in boxer briefs fumbling around in the dark seeking a toilet.
My husband noted that he felt something with his foot when he first entered the bathroom. He wondered if it was a sock. (It was not.) He flipped the light on and saw two beady black eyes staring up at him. Honey Bun instantly made a beeline behind the toilet.
My husband poked his head back into the bedroom and whisper-shouted, “The hamster got out!” I sat straight up, like one of those fake mechanical kids in the Toy Story simulation room. My half-asleep brain immediately pictured one of two scenarios: 1. She was floating belly up in the toilet or 2. She was soaked beyond all recognition after an unfortunate encounter with our dog.
I asked the obvious question, “Well…is she ALIVE?!” He answered affirmatively, but it was also clear he was in no mood to get on all fours and search behind the toilet for a hamster. So I did what any good parent would do. I stumbled into my daughter’s bedroom and woke her up out of a dead sleep to go retrieve the hamster. She was the pet sitter, after all. If we’re dealing with the hamster at 5:30 am, we’re ALL dealing with the hamster at 5:30 am.
Also, I have a strict no-personal-contact policy when it comes to rodents.
Our daughter entered our bathroom, squatted next to the toilet and extended a gentle hand, scooping up a no-worse-for-the-wear Honey Bun who actually seemed pretty relieved.
She must have been exhausted because once we got her back in her cage, she drank her water for a full 2 minutes. Then she proceeded to run laps around her cage and frantically shove corn kernels into her mouth. Five minutes later, she was sound asleep.
I think she must have had the adventure of a lifetime.
Sometimes I find myself in a rut, just content to do what is comfortable. But ultimately that feeling wears off and I end up feeling like I’m stuck on a hamster wheel. When fear gets the best of me and I fall into complacency just doing what I’ve always done, or hesitate to step out of my comfort zone, I have to remind myself that “God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” (2 Timothy 1:7)
The unknown can be scary. It’s easier to stay right where we are so that we don’t have to experience unnecessary disappointment or discomfort. But if we’re going to walk into whatever God is calling us to, we have to say yes to the adventure. And we can say yes even though we are afraid. God has promised to be with us as we face whatever seems scary right now.
We have to take the leap of faith into whatever God is calling us to do. It just might be the adventure of a lifetime!