As a child, my biggest fears were thunderstorms and nukes. The thunder is obvious, of course. But I also grew up in the sixties when every school child knew the Russians would obliterate us one of these days. When a new subdivision went up, one of my friends whispered that every house included a bomb shelter! (Today, we call them basements.)
These fears were real and choking. At night, I thought I would die from fear if thunder rattled my window one more time. But I also knew the secret weapon. My mother. If I could just get the courage to call her name, and if she would just crawl from her warm, comfy bed and come stand in my room for two seconds, the thunder would be defeated. It worked every time. (thanks, mom)
I learned about the second weapon from Walter Cronkite. One night, after he described some new and terrifying threat to life-as-we-know-it, he mentioned our missile defense system. I pieced together that we had radar stations on every corner of the United States. Nobody could get a nuke passed these guys. They would blow it out of the sky way out over the ocean. We were saved!
I held onto the hope of my mother’s voice and our missile defense system for several years.
Eventually I realized, of course, that storms do kill people, even mothers. And no early-warning system can help when bad guys turn airplanes into bombs. But, by then, I’d found a more permanent weapon against fear. Faith.
Faith doesn’t make all the thunder go away, of course. I still tremble a bit sometimes, and I face lots of situations I don’t understand. But faith tells me that, eventually, things are going to be okay. Better than okay. Things are going to be grand in The End. Even if a missile gets all the way through.