It's a hot summer's night and you're fast
asleep in bed. You suddenly wake up...was that a sound or not. You pause and
wait...nothing. You roll over to go back to sleep, and then it happens again.
That noise! That familiar noise that makes you stomach sink. Your heart is
already racing as you turn the light on. You glance around the room and there it
is....a stupid parktown prawn!! (PTP)
Your mind races as you come up with an idea of how
you're going to capture it without waking the rest of the house up. A tub! You
quickly, and quietly, stumble out of bed, out your room to the kitchen and find
those empty margarine tubs in the cupboard and then head back to your room,
closing the door quietly behind you.
You jump back onto your bed and lean over to find
the PTP...but it's no where to be seen. Your heart skips a beat as your ears
turn extra sensitive to hear a noise....any noise. Nothing. Heart racing, you
know you cant go back to sleep. You hit the curtains in case it's climbing up.
Nothing. Taking a deep breath you jump into the middle of the room and get down
to look under the bed, dressing table and work table...no sign of it. You sit
there, tub in hand waiting.....and then you hear it. A scratching sound coming
from behind a box. Your heart starts racing all over again! You wait and wait
for what seems like hours and finally it comes crawling out from behind the box.
You watch it as it makes it out further, but it's still on the skirting
board...and you know you can not capture it there....so out of madness, you try
talking it into either walking on the wall or the carpet....preferable before it
goes behind the bedside table. Finally, a few inches before it goes behind the
bedside table it listens to you and crawls on the carpet. In that split second
you POUNCE and put the tub over it before it can jump and get all angry at you.
Holding the tub down firmly you hear it jumping underneath. THUMP THUMP
THUMP....finally it stops. As your heart begins to slow, you realise the lid is
still in the middle of the room....so using your feet you pull it towards you
and slowly lift the one end of the tub and slide the lid under until you can
close it....big little PTP is stuck inside!
You make your way to the door with tub in hand and
place it on the floor with a brick on top of it....no ways it's escaping!! You
climb back into bed but still can't sleep as the PTP jumps every now and then or
seems to be "scratching" it's way out. It bugs you until morning when my dad
come and takes it out and deals with it.
The point of this story is that it reminds me a lot
about anxiety. Our mind is like my room, and the PTP is something small and
stupid that keeps me awake or anxious. We may think we have the situation under
control in a little tub in the corner of our mind....but its still there and it
still keeps us awake at night, anxiously. Until we give that small thing over to
our Heavenly father to deal with, there isn't much we can do about. So don't be
anxious about anything - give it to God instead.
"Do not be anxious
about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,
present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
Philippians 4:6 &
7
