Being Still

A pair of killdeer made a nest in my parents' driveway this spring. After they hatched, I paused  to take a picture from my car, and I noticed something about the baby birds.




















They were perfectly still.

So still, if I hadn't already known how many babies there were, I might have missed one. Maybe it's an odd thing to notice, but I'd been thinking about being still for a while already...

Time for some more honesty. My health has not been good for years, and that's putting it mildly. The last year has been especially rough. Lately I've felt a strong desire to know what is wrong, but that desire seems to be countered by multiple songs and scriptures constantly coming to mind that mention being still.

It got me thinking. Does my worry count as being still? No, it really doesn't.

Does God know what is wrong? Yes.

Is He still in control? Yes

So why should I worry?

Those baby birds were not looking around trying to see what was wrong. They had to have known that something wasn't right, yet they held completely still. That was how they were safe. Had I been a predator, keeping still and letting their parents handle the situation was their best assurance of safety.

If only it were easy for me to keep still and trust my Heavenly Father to handle my situation. It's not easy, but I have felt inspired to let my worry go. I'm not actively seeking diagnosis; I'm simply trying to rest in the promise that God knows, God cares, and He is taking care of everything. (See Psalm 46:10)

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Five Nights of "Go Away!"

Apparently a new horror game came out in August, and references to it have been appearing in my social media feeds ever since. Perhaps you've heard of Five Nights at Freddy's? I wish I hadn't.

I actually have watched someone play the game, and frankly, it shouldn't be as scary as it is. But it plays on a particular fear of mine that I cannot seem to shake even though I know it is completely irrational.

I cannot stand animatronics. They absolutely terrify me.

My first personal memory was of my grandmother's crawling baby doll. That thing was just plain creepy. Inanimate objects are not supposed to move like that.

Then there were the characters at Chuck E. Cheese's. Yeah...the very chain that apparently inspired the nightmare that has been intruding on my normally horror-free media feeds. What made Chuck E. Cheese's worse for me as a child was the fact that occasionally someone would dress up as the giant mouse himself and greet the children. You think I had issues with him just up on the stage? One time my sister and I hid under the table when we saw him approaching, and had to be coaxed back out after he was gone.

This has presented some opportunities for my peers to mock me at theme parks. "It's a Small World" is still horrifying to me, even after the update. But back when it was looking a bit shabby...that was worse. If you've ever been to Six Flags Over Georgia, you'll find "Monster Mansion," a delightful little ride full of brightly colored animatronics that hopefully stay where they belong while you go past in your little boat. Then it takes a scary turn. You know, you go into the dark, and the music goes into a minor key and things are lit spookily? At least, I assume that's what it looks like. My fear of the animatronics means I've never actually seen that part of the ride.

My method of coping with rides involving animatronics has been to close my eyes tight, plug my ears with my fingers, and hum "Kumbaya." It works for me.

I honestly do not know where I got this fear from. Other fears, I can think of instances in my life that spawned the irrational behavior, but not this one. I've had it for as long as I can remember, and it is not doing away.

I usually avoid the horror genre as a whole. I have an over-active imagination that doesn't need help in producing nightmares for me. I could do a whole lot better without Five Nights at Freddy's in my life, though. Seriously, it needs to die.

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Distance Makes The Heart Grow Fonder

I love my friends. Really I do. It's probably easier to tell when I am actually with them, though. Since most of my friends live at a distance from me, you would think that I talk with them on the phone, or text to keep in touch. I'll be honest. I don't. Not even my best friends will override my intense dislike of phone calls. The most they might get is a text. Usually not even that.

Fortunately, they don't seem to mind. We just wait until we are back together and then spend the next eight hours catching up on everything. Let me tell you, talking for that long will wear your voice out.

It does make me wonder, though. I know that I myself am a low-maintenance friend. I don't require a great deal of time and effort to feel secure that we are still friends. What I question is if I somehow managed to collect a circle of friends that are the same way, or if this is maybe not as unusual as I might have once thought. Maybe it's a combination of the two factors.

Or maybe these friends feel that I am extremely fickle and are simply far too polite to complain about my apparent neglect.

I used to email a couple of good friends on a fairly regular basis. This was back when people would actually print out emails to save them. I probably still have them in a folder somewhere among my childhood things. While I don't feel quite as close to one of these friends due to no longer keeping in constant contact, I still feel that old bond, and were she to suddenly call or want to hang out, I'd be all over it. After I got over my anxiety from an unexpected phone call, that is.

Email seems to have gone out of fashion, though. Instead we have texting and Facebook. I'm finding Facebook more and more impersonal, and I don't really think I like it. I've gotten to the point that I share very few pictures and even fewer statuses updating my friends about my life. I have been using it to post links to the blog, though. Maybe that will satisfy someone.

The one and only reason I can come up with for why I do not text my friends--unless I don't have their phone number--is that I am terrified that I will text at an inconvenient time. I realize, logically, that that is exactly what texting is for. They can read and reply later if I send at an inconvenient time. But there you have it. I'm paralyzed because I don't want to make someone else uncomfortable. I really need to work on that.

So...more social anxiety from me, and I think I've said enough for now about my love/hate relationship with communicating via cellphone.


Want to read more about my introverted misadventures?
Check out these posts:

I Hugged a Stranger
Talking To Myself
Shhhh...I'm Introverting

Shhhh... I'm Introverting

I'm an introvert. There is no denying it. Some people are somewhere between extrovert and introvert--I believe it is called ambiversion, but I am firmly on the side of introversion. I come from a family of introverts, so it's sometimes hard for me to remember that other people do not function the same way I do.

Rather than explain what introversion is, I want to tell you what it means to me personally. You can find all kinds of information on introversion, what it is, and how introverts behave on average. That's not what I want to do today.

I don't dislike people. I do dislike crowds. They make me nervous.

I don't actually dislike interacting with other people, even strangers. Today, I purposely went inside the bank and Starbucks rather than the drive thru. I even avoided self check-out at Walmart. It is possible that I prefer face-to-face interaction when I know dealing with other people is unavoidable. I have fewer screw-ups going inside than using the drive thru. But I can guarantee that none of these people knew I was an introvert. I'm as friendly as you could wish. I even smile.

Unfortunately, if I am forced to be constantly in the company of other people--even people I like--for days on end, I'm going to start feeling claustrophobic. If I spend a weekend at social events, come Monday, I need another weekend to recover from my weekend.

Even at parties that I'm enjoying I will be very aware of the exits, possible retreats from all the noise (a bathroom or hallway), and what time I am planning to leave. It's nothing against my host or my friends. I just can't handle extended periods of high noise levels well.

Small talk bores me. Almost nothing annoyed me more as a teenager than to be asked how I was doing by someone that I knew perfectly well did not want an honest answer. This was especially true if I didn't think it was any of their business. I nearly insulted a dear friend when I complained about it, and he pointed out that he did care, and it was his business since he was my friend. I'm glad he called me out on it, but if he had not been a true friend, I would not have agreed with his sentiment.

If at all possible, text me. If a phone call is warranted, I would love dearly to have a text as a warning first, but I know that's not going to happen. Phone calls give me anxiety like you would not believe, unless you suffer from it yourself. Even making phone calls is difficult, which is why my sister and grandmother occasionally complain that they don't hear from me often enough. I love talking to my friends, but I hate phones. Phones are evil.

So...comment, text me, tweet me, email me, message me, post on my Facebook wall, but for the love of biscuits and gravy, don't call me about this blog post!

Want to read more about my introverted misadventures?
Check out these posts:

I Hugged a Stranger
Distance Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
Talking To Myself