fear

I'm usually grappling with fear to some extent and am sometimes nearly paralyzed by it. I'm mostly at peace, however, when engaged with present realities, such as loading the dishwasher, writing or rolling my cart through Safeway. For this reason and a few others, I genuinely enjoy most mundane tasks.

But give me a few idle hours and fear sidles up on the couch next to me, and if I'm not focussed on anything in particular, I'm easily sucked into the conversation. Perhaps I'm especially vulnerable now because we're in a transitional time full of unknowns.

It helps that Anna is addicted to the Chronicles of Narnia and we have been reading through the series for a year now. She's memorized entire paragraphs and corrects my pronunciation on names like "Silenus." Anyway, although I would welcome a new book into our reading routine, Narnia helps me more now than it ever did when I was a kid.

We almost always come across something ticklish, comforting or beautiful during our nightly read. Tonight we read a chapter from Prince Caspian, in which Lucy sees Aslan and he asks her to follow him, but her siblings all deny his presence and refuse.

Later on, Susan is full of guilt about her denial, and she doesn't want to face Aslan:

"Then, after an awful pause, the deep voice said, 'Susan.' Susan made no answer but the others thought she was crying. 'You have listened to fears, child,' Aslan said. 'Come let me breathe on you. Forget them. Are you brave again?'"