Fear – Snail Trek Blog

Sculpting Granite

Terry was a slab of granite—six-foot-six and broad enough to swallow the hallway light as he approached my office door.

The Texas Rehabilitation Commission had assigned me to be his employment counselor. His diagnosis unsettled me: intermittent explosive disorder. His psychiatric and criminal records confirmed what his presence suggested—volcanic outbursts, sudden and violent.

He carried fear like a scent, the byproduct of deep, unhealed wounds. His boiling point was impossible to predict.

Counseling sessions became balancing acts. When he demanded benefits the state didn’t allow, his anger surged. I rearranged my office furniture. If his temper erupted, I needed a Terry-free escape.

As a young man, Terry had been convicted of murder; he served years in prison. Not long before becoming my client, he was released after committing another murder.

Yet here he was, looking for help.

“I was in a pawnshop when this guy pulls a gun and holds up the place. There I was—a felon—with a gun in my face. What was I gonna do? I’m not even supposed to have a gun! But instinct took over. I pulled out my hidden revolver and shot him.”

“And then?”

“I got down on the bloody floor with him. I held him in my arms … and prayed for him until he died.”

Prayed for him? I wondered if beneath that rage there might be a gentler man.

My next meeting with him ran into the evening. My co-workers had gone home. The sky had blackened. Soon his demands also turned dark and unreasonable. I pushed back as gently as I could. His brow knotted as his voice grew heavy and guttural.

Then he exploded—leaping to his feet, towering, trembling, fists clenched. I measured the distance to the door. I slid my chair back, inching toward escape.

Next came the threat.

“Yeah, you need to be afraid!” he bellowed. “Run! As fast as you can! But I’ll get you before you reach your car! You won’t make it home alive!”

He stormed out, footsteps pounding down the stairwell—the same stairs I would need to take.

I called my wife. “If I’m not home in an hour, call the police.”

I waited, then ran—three steps at a time—across the parking lot, scanning shadows. No Terry. I dove into my car, engine roaring as I tore out of the lot.

Somehow, I made it home alive.

Terry was soon ejected from the program. Eventually, a new job took me from Texas to Southern California, half a continent away. I tried to forget him, assuming he’d never find work—or that he’d killed again and was serving life, if he was alive at all.

Nearly twenty years passed.

One day, a Facebook notification popped up. I almost ignored it, but the profile photo caught me—gray hair, face like a ravine, and … was that a clerical collar? I clicked. A white square at the neck, indeed, a clerical collar.

The message read: “Hello. I am trying to locate Craig Dahlberg. He was a great blessing in helping me. Pastor Terry.”

In the photo, he held up a certificate of ordination, smiling.

Pastor Terry? Could it be?

When we connected, he told me he’d turned his life around. That he was sorry for the man he’d been, sorry for how he’d treated me. Patience, kindness, and care, he said, had eventually won him over. He’d discovered that God could love a felon, even a two-time murderer.

“I’ve changed. I went to Bible school. Now I’m a pastor, helping others change their lives. I wanted to thank you. It’s all worked out so well.”

At our very worst—when fear and fury cling to us—can even our most consequential, terrible choices be redeemed? Can the raging river of life finally deposit even the worst offenders, the most troubled souls, on the peaceful shore?

Terry’s eyes told me they can. However life had sculpted him, he eventually found the Sculptor’s sure and gentle hands.

Precious Years

A brother and sister, our children’s playmates, were a matched set—like miniature chess pieces—completely out of scale with other children their age. They were aging at a furious pace.

Their paper-thin skin stretched over their fragile frames. Tripping over a garden hose could be dangerous. A misdirected softball might shatter their brittle bones.

They both suffered from progeria, a rare genetic disorder that occurs in just one out of every four million births. Progeria brings stunted growth, abnormal facial features, and rapid aging. The average life expectancy is just 14.5 years.

Yet while these neighborhood children were trapped in old bodies, their spirits hadn’t gotten that message. They launched their miniature frames like carefree foals, sunlight dancing off their bald heads, their oversized eyes magnified behind thick lenses. Though their hyper-aged bodies may have been nearing the end of life, the children gleefully rode tiny bicycles down our street with the joy and abandon of most nine-year-olds.

They were the happy children. They seemed to savor every moment, free from anxiety, fully engaged in each passing day. Their joy seemed a deliberate rebellion against passing time. Though their coming years might be few, their spirits pushed progeria to the very edge of their lives.

Another image comes to mind: Judah’s King Hezekiah, sitting in the shadowed corners of his throne room. At 39, he had already lived twice as long as the expected lifespan of my young neighbors. He, too, suffered from a terminal illness—a painful, ulcerous disease. But unlike the joyful siblings, Hezekiah was consumed by despair. Despite his wealth and power, he felt abandoned and afraid.

In his desperation, Hezekiah cried out to God. And God answered, granting the king 15 more years of life. During that bonus time, he even fathered an heir to the throne.

Today, many of us enjoy an even greater bonus. With medical advances and improved living conditions, the average lifespan has climbed into the seventies—thirty years longer than that of a person in 19th-century England, and twice the years Hezekiah had been given.

Longevity is a luxury. But it’s also a test.

Will I spend this gift of time clearing e-mails, binge-watching forgettable shows, or fixating on ulcer-inducing headlines? Will I obsess over spreadsheets, hoping to avoid starvation and failing to keep up?

In contrast, I often recall the wholehearted outlook of my children’s progeria friends. Could their example teach me to invest my own years more wisely? Could I cultivate a heart that is more hopeful and grateful for the joys each day brings?

Whether we face a shortened life, a fifteen-year bonus, or a thirty-year longevity bump, one question rises above the rest:

Not “How long will I live?”

Rather, “How will I fill the time I have been given?”

Investment Accounting

Youth imagines time to run on forever. Typical of our young station in life, there is neither enough time nor money to supply our interests. Investable resources are drawn down to support the thing at hand, with less thought of those many decades ahead.

Perhaps, for awhile, that is as it should be. Youth feeds upon the hope of opportunities at hand to grow the vision and passion of our yet-to-be discovered futures. How many times, as young people, have we re-imagined what our lives would become? Somehow, ageless bodies, good fortune and our emerging skillset would provide whatever that future held.

During my early twenties, it first occurred to me that I was falling behind. The automated success ladder I had envisioned for my life became less automatic, and I slowly veered off course, a small degree at first, which widened with my advancing age. How had I been relegated, at my first job, to cleaning toilets in a restaurant? How did I find myself, shirtless, hot, and profusely sweaty, baling hay in Mississippi? And, ignorant of the profoundly itchy characteristics of okra upon the skin, how was I now ignorantly harvesting it bare-handed and bare-chested?

I continued onward with vague goals, and without the means to achieve them. Little did I recognize that I tottered already on the precipice of an ungoverned financial future.

The earnings of $1.25 per hour at my first job were put toward my first car ownership, a 1962 MGA Mark II Roadster with rusted door panels, which I purchased for $300 when I was 17. I considered this purchase a mighty good investment both toward transportation and developing social opportunities with the fairer sex.

I failed to realize that the $300 required for the purchase of the MGA, along with all my other earnings, did not belong to me. Rather, it was all on loan to me, as were all the other accounts of my life, monetary or otherwise. Success in every enterprise, reputation, health, relationships with family and friends were all ceded to me from God. They were on loan to me. My interest should be to prosper them and generate what good I could of them, before the eventual completion of the terms of the loan.

My thinking started to change. I began asking myself — when time itself is folded up and retired, what value of our lives is there remaining?

The Gospel of Luke, chapter 19, reminds us of the investments loaned by a nobleman to three servants. Upon his return, the nobleman would ask for an accounting of the three loans. One servant took wise risks, investing his loan aggressively, which paid off. Over time, his financial investment soared, as did, we might assume, the other similarly managed affairs of his life. Due to his devotion to excellence, his professional advancements arrived with remarkable speed. Before long, he himself purchased the very company that had initially hired him. He may have become a man of great influence, whether obvious or subtle in nature. He stirred vision and passion in others by his virtuous behavior. Once, upon taking a corner too fast, an old Volkswagen overturned; he ran over to help, rolled the car over with the driver still strapped in the seat, then pulled out the crumpled fenders with his bare hands. He was a gregarious sort. When his neighbors complained about the ruckus from the parties he would throw for his friends, he remedied the issue by inviting them to his parties as well. Upon his ultimate return, the master was pleased with him, very well pleased, and the servant was appropriately rewarded.

The second servant was equally virtuous, a prudent lifelong conservative investor. His were ever an equal mix of stock and bond ETF financial investment products. They were safe, and he needn’t fret over economic downturns. His finances were established to weather adversity, as were his other affairs. A man of lesser passion than the first servant, he carefully governed his relationships. His friendships with others, cookie-cutter versions of himself, were reliable and pleasantly in tune with his own persuasions. He was a faithful and good worker, advancing up the predictable ranks to the admiring “Atta boy!”accolades of his coworkers. Upon passing by a person in need, he might consider how he might meet the need, pause for the briefest moment, then press on. “Ah! A little too late, already passed by—never mind.” To prove his compassion, he would be the first to phone in a 911 emergency—from a safe distance across the street. He noted his tarnished world and its misdirected values, and he exerted his passionless, middling efforts, budging toward doing good when convenient, and performing righteous acts without staining his trousers.

A lone koi fish circled the grimy pond within the courtyard of the third servant. Deflated by life, he awaited funds for its restoration. A browbeaten and fearful man, he expected the worst and accomplished little. He supposed his boss to be an abrupt and unpredictable taskmaster, who himself would take credit for the servant’s work. A boss, he mistakenly perceived, with unreal expectations and no room for lax performance. Office parties were a thing of horror for the servant, who with feigned devotion would heap self-ingratiating praise upon his supervisor. He danced, like a marionette, to earn his boss’s approval. In the end, the character flaws within the third servant produced no growth whatsoever, no improvement of character, performance, relationships, grace, or virtue. The servant succumbed to such self-manufactured fear that he squandered the generous nobleman’s loan, securing it safely within his mattress, its real value slowly but surely depreciating over time; he ended with less than what he had been entrusted with.

At the appointed time, the nobleman, now crowned king, would return and require an accounting of his investments long in the making. But before then, we may make two observations. The first is that a reward clearly awaited those who had invested wisely. And perhaps even more prescient—while the nobleman was yet away, there was still time enough for the servants to mend their ways.

Virus Diaries: Social Distancing—It’s Simple Math

Once it was all the rage: “Six Degrees of Separation.” We discovered that we’re each just six relationships away from everyone else. I know you; that’s one relationship away. And you know other people. You know Sylvester, and he knows people. Bingo, two relationships away. He knows Edna, and she knows people. That’s number three. Our relationships multiply exponentially. So if you do that at six levels, or “degrees,” you could know everyone on the planet. Friends of friends, and so on. So there! All people are six, or fewer, social connections away from each other. Six degrees of separation.

It’s simple math.

But wait a minute. Nowadays, on my daily walk, I count to six not by relationships, but by distance. I don’t want to “reach out and touch somebody.” No way! I want people six feet—or more—away from me. Today, give me “Six Feet of Separation.” The coronavirus has me jumping, keeping a street-width away from other walkers. My glasses fog as I re-breathe my mask-recirculated air. Because who knows? That less-than-six-feet-away stroller may have been around another less-than-six-feet-away walker, who may have been around another long-distance violator! Hang the formerly vaunted “six degrees of separation” theory! Spare us from those relationships six deep. And wide. And far. Keep me away! I’m all about “six feet of separation.”

It’s simple math.

One day, Mr. Coronavirus will turn us loose, and we might recognize life as we once knew it. When our gloves come off—literally—we’ll likely return to forging new “six degree of separation” relationships, which are just out of reach at the moment. And, yes, perhaps we’ll talk without needing to shout across the street.

Until then, we can be grateful, summing up both what we now have, and what we will then have.

It’s simple math.

Done with Fear

Two minutes after this picture was taken, a great white shark lying in wait on the muddy bottom of this central Texas stream attacked these folks lounging in their inner-tubes.

There was no great white shark, of course. But fear is often just that unreasonable. Fear of non-existent sharks is Darkness at Noon. And dreaded Night Terrors take over after the sun sets.

All these fears belong in the Litter Boat, located next to our inner tube travelers. But dispensing with fear is not always that easy.

There’s a Fear du Jour, a fear for every day of the year, with some left over. There’s fear of that dreaded conversation. Fear of not finding a job. Fear of finding the wrong job. Fear of that new pain, or itch, or twitch that wasn’t there yesterday.

The defense against unreasonable fear is: channel-switching. Channel-switching is the intentional act of guiding the heart and soul into pleasant pastures.

I had to channel-switch three nights ago after a particularly disastrous day turned me into an unmitigated failure. I knew I was done for. My attitude, my anger, my weight, my finances, my entire future all belonged in the dumpster. I feared my life was out of control.

So I desperately switched channels.

I switched to the channel that played back to me all the best things in my life. True friends. Great mentors. A reliable car. An honest paycheck. An adaptable future. A forgiving family. A loving God.

As I drifted along downstream, I stuffed all the rest into the Litter Boat, helping to turn my gray thoughts into brightness.

Bomb Threats

An urgent voice came over the intercom: “All personnel evacuate the building immediately!”

Agents quickly stuck their heads into my classroom door at the parole office to see if I needed help clearing the students from the room. I grabbed my indispensable possessions—backpack, coffee mug, and iPhone charger—and despite the urgency of the message, casually stopped by to use the restroom on the way out.

This was our second bomb threat on two successive Tuesdays, so the novelty had worn off. That’s why I assembled my belongings and executed the evacuation at a leisurely pace.

Six months ago, we had our first bomb threat, and my evacuation tactics were far less polished. I had bolted from the chair, bruising my thigh on the low-hanging desk drawer, barely concealing my semi-panicked plea for students to exit—quickly, please! We had hustled to the far side of the parking lot, speculating about how long we would be outside, and was there really a bomb? If so, who had planted it and why? Creative conjecture ran rampant. What if the building blew up? Were we far enough away to not risk injury? To top it off, I then realized—I had to urgently use the restroom!

But there was no such anxiety this time. I was a seasoned veteran—an experienced bomb-scare advisor. I knew it would take two-and-a-half hours for the bomb-sniffing dog to arrive and run its course through the building with promises of puppy-treats dancing in its brain for a job well-done. A final rooftop sweep would signal the final “all clear.” By that time, I could easily hike the three-quarters of a mile to Starbucks, sip a Cafe Americano, check my e-mail messages, and leisurely return. So I did.

As I walked, I wondered. Who could have called in this parole office bomb scare? A discontented parolee? An agent threatened with job loss because of agency downsizing? A cleaning crew contractor, disgruntled by ongoing cockroach wars?

I was determined to discover who the culprit might be.

After my hike back from Starbucks, I still had time to kill. So I opted for pancakes at Dennys, where I discovered a glut of other refugee staff members from the parole office, killing time, sipping coffee, munching on selections from the Breakfast Specials section of the menu.

And then the obvious conclusion struck me.

I’m no detective. But I can sniff out a Denny’s manager who’s just a bit too eager to bloat a day’s profit from the misfortune of traumatized, bomb-threatened parole staff, fattening his income with my humble short stack of wheat pancakes and the surrounding sea of parole agents downing oversized three-egg Spanish omelets and greasy hashed brown potatoes.

The Denny’s manager – he’s the one calling in the bomb threats.

Oh, yeah.

Strategic Reserves

The stretch of beach is strewn with large rocks, not the sort of place that invites sandal-shodden strolls. Contrasting color divides the scene. On one side, rough rocks protect the underlying sand from erosion. On the other side, crazy algae splashes the sand like streaks of fashionably dyed green swaths in an edgy contemporary hair coiffure. With each fall of the tide, the algae gleams green at sun, sand and shore as if it were its last appearance on stage. It is at home, abandoned to the forces of the elements. The riot of color catches the eye and the heart.

A coastal oil spill would play havoc with this bright green outcropping. Oil is our lifeblood, so we keep strategic reserves secure in deep underground salt domes. Dark, still, ancient, lifeless reserves harbored in salt domes. Very dreary.

At face value, we know the oil is far more important to us than this patch of green. It plies a place of security since it provides untold improvements in our lives. We need it. We keep it secure.

The poor algae knows no better than to play with wild abandon, shunning the dull brown rocks for the small stretch of sand. Unprotected and prone to the elements, its time may be short.

Still, our hearts belong to the algae. It is yet alive. It provides us an antidote for an otherwise drab scene.

We walk on, as we eventually must, and we are left to wonder. In the ebb and flow of our own life events, is there enough gaudy bright green to offset the cold, dark reserves that gather with age?

The Trouble with Mushrooms

Several years ago, the apricot tree in our front yard yielded so much fruit that we couldn’t use or give it all away. It was a favorite of the Department of Agriculture, who annually set small traps in its limbs to monitor for the presence of Mediterranean fruit flies.

Then, without warning, branches started to wither. Within two years, there was no more fruit and there were no more leaves. Two hundred dollars removed the dead tree from our yard, but not from our affections.

One felled tree tells a history in the rings. In them, one can see the emerging story of a life, first as a young sapling, then as an adolescent and finally as a tree with a mature trunk, limbs and leaves providing refuge from the sun and generous fruit.

Our vocations are like trees. As we grow in expertise, they provide maturing experiences and increasing financial rewards. Eventually, they bloom and yield fruit in our lives.

Maybe that’s the way things used to be.

Increasingly, vocations and the workplace have become far less secure. Like trees being felled, many friends have had their employment cut from under them, and we wonder if we can hear the same chainsaws approaching us. If we’re fortunate, the saws come close and pass by. They’re after a different tree, for now at least.

Mushrooms proliferate in the decaying tree stump, feasting on the nutrients that were once a tree.

Those who have suffered the loss of a vocation wistfully examine the remains, hoping to find a green shoot that will offer a new future and source of provision. In place of the tree, however, there are only mushrooms.

But mushrooms are fragile things that come and go quickly, leaving behind no limbs, no leaves, no shade, and no fruit.

That’s the trouble with mushrooms.