Terrors in the night

It's been awhile. I've felt lonely, depressed, discouraged--but not panicked. Mortified, stupified--but it's been awhile since I felt terrified.

I used to have bad dreams very often as a child. Say what adults may about the joys of being young, it is also filled with fears, and those fears used to become real in the night. I remember being angry with a brother once for awakening me from the only good dream I could ever remember having among hosts of nightmares. But usually now my dreams don't scare me so much--they might be strange, or uncomfortable even, but not generally frightening.

It doesn't make it any less scary that I don't know what I was scared of. All I know is I knew I couldn't breathe--and then I woke up, and I still couldn't breathe. I had my mouth open and was sucking in air and none was getting to my lungs.

I was evidently scared enough that I scared everyone else. A door opened across the hall: "Is everything alright?" I didn't answer, because I was concentrating too hard on breathing. "Are you alright?" "Si, grazie," I responded this time, and then realized that was Italian in answer to an English question. It took some time before I could convince myself that it was alright to lie down again.

I tried to laugh about it in the morning: "Probably I just got the blanket in my face and thought I was suffocating--or maybe I dreamed that I had to speak Italian." But it didn't take away the cold fear that I would morbidly let slip through every once in awhile, like pressing on a bruise to feel the shock of real pain.

I do like to feel it sometimes--to remember, perhaps, that the world is not just a smiley daffodil place, and that I know it's not. To remember the darkness that I am hidden from by One who has promised to be my sun and my shield and pull me in under his feathers to keep me safe from the terrors of the night.

Jesus, the name that calms our fears. I will lie down and sleep in peace...