Holes

One of my first memories of a place, outside of my childhood home, is of my dance school.

I suppose the ballet room was fairly typical. One fully mirrored wall, barres on the other three walls, resin box in the corner, and a piano. But my first dance school boasted something that none of the following ones did, a wall of holes.

The idea was that a parent could watch their child without the child knowing it and therefore without being distracted. So, the studio directors cut out eye-sized holes all over the wall of the parent's waiting room. There were up high holes for tall daddies and medium height holes for mommys and a variety of lower holes for siblings. There were benches to help if you couldn't find quite the right height of hole.

Coming into the waiting room the first time I saw what looked like a bunch of people standing with their faces pressed to the wall. This was weird. Later, I was in my first class and I happened to glance at the wall, and I saw that it was covered in random eyes. This was terrifying. I have an older brother, so even at that tender age I knew all about cyclops. I was being watched by an army of them. I was paralysed with fear.

This week Grant had a scary experience for a child. The result was nightmares.

I held his hot shaking body on my lap and said, "Tell me a true thing Grant."

"God loves me."

"That is truth. What else?"

"He's always with me."

"Yes."

"Mommy loves me. Daddy loves me."

"That is true Grant. Keep them coming."

He comforted himself with truth and went back to bed.

The next night he came down again. He couldn't fall asleep, his mind raced with fearful thoughts.

I held out my arms and said, "Tell me a true thing Grant."

I waited for the truth that comforts, the truth that soothes, it didn't come.

Instead he looked me in the eye and said, "Mommy sometimes true things aren't happy things."

I stared at him in surprise.

He was absolutely right.

Truth isn't always happy.

Truth isn't always comforting.

My mind suddenly brought forward an array of truths that were anything but soothing.

They stared at me, a wall of cyclops eyes that followed my every move.

I sent Grant to bed and sat there in confusion.

If truth terrifies, what is there to trust?

And then I thought of the Truth who became man and taught us, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

The truth is that there is nothing to fear because the worst has already happened. Jesus was crucified. Death devoured Him instead of us. He submitted, He conquered, and He saved us.

The truth is that the Truth of Christ is so much more true than any fear we can imagine.

There are days, weeks, months, when the evil in this world winks at me through peep holes. When I see the sinful choices, unhealthy indulgences, and manifold consequences to myself and those I love, and I am paralysed. But I do what I did when I was a skinny thing in pink tights;

I remember the truth.

I experience the freedom from fear.

And I dance.