31Days - Cockroaches

I had never seen a cockroach until I was in college. Our neighbors in married student housing, though, regularly left their fish in paper bags outside the door. That's a lovely smell after climbing three flights of stairs.... Evidently the roaches thought so, too. It was a constant battle. I was so glad when we found a tiny rent house out in the country. The bedroom was small enough that we had to take the door off the bedroom closet to be able to get into it. The bed blocked the doorway to the closet, but with the door off we could reach around to grab the hanging clothes... sort of. But it was ours. No neighbors with funky smells and roaming roaches. Yay!

Then we moved to Texas. Ummm.... yeah. I'm not sure you could grow up in the south and not know what a roach looks like. They evidently like the warmer weather - and were much more common there. The roaches we'd had in Indiana were small. Texas grows them big. I was astonished (and horrified) to see cockroaches more along the lines of one to two inches long! YIKES. But it got worse. I simply cannot describe the horror when I found out that those big, nasty critters... FLEW! It didn't help that part of this discovery was having one fly directly towards my face.

So my fear for Day Eighteen:

Yes, I am afraid of flying cockroaches.

Honestly, I was tempted to leave it at that – just throw it out there and run. Or drive, actually. Today will be a short post because I'm going to be spending the day driving 10-12 hours. I have to admit that my first thought was to just throw it out there and ask YOU to figure out the Biblical Truth. I mean, seriously, flying cockroaches? What's the Truth in that? But... I'm not going to cop-out quite that much.... I think I've actually got it. So....

It's a real fear... with some valid reasons behind it. History – my history – proves flying cockroaches can result in a traumatizing experience. So there's some truth in the fear. But what's the real Truth? Truth with a capital T?

God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
(Genesis 1:28)

We are to subdue and rule!

Yup. That simple. Subdue and rule. And I have to say I didn't have the faintest hesitation in paying a professional to assure my success in that command. Monthly pest control service was in the budget as long as we lived in Texas. Not a problem! I'd been commanded to subdue and rule and I was taking it seriously! So that's it. The Biblical truth for flying cockroaches. Subdue and Rule!

Dear LORD, I honestly can't find a reason to thank You for flying cockroaches. But I am going to thank You for Orkin... for the help to subdue and rule. And... I'll give thanks for a sense of humor, too – no matter how warped my kids and readers think it may be.

Fear: I am afraid of flying cockroaches.

Truth:

• We are to subdue and rule! (Genesis 1:28)

-jenn

Note: This post is part of a 31-day writing challenge. Click here to see the rest of the posts on my 31 Days of Fear (and Truth).