The answers came thick and fast, spiders, shadows in my bedroom, creaks at night, the toilet flush, a zombie apocalypse. I had just asked a primary school class, ‘What really scares you?’ Of course, those fears are not rooted in a genuine threat, never the less the fear is real. How, though as adults, do we respond to genuine threat? I have realised that I stop breathing when suddenly threatened and have to tell myself to breath again.
I often ask asylum seekers who have experienced sustained extreme trauma if they are sleeping OK? Everyone has said they have real difficulty sleeping. In Psalm 3 David prays in the middle of extreme trauma. His murderous son has just launched a military coup, turning nearly all the country against him and he is being pursued by an army of thousands. David boldly states, ‘But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high.’v3Can David sleep OK? Amazingly, yes he can. His words are, ‘I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.’v5 I pray that whatever your ‘zombie apocalypse’ you will know the Lord as a shield around you and from that gain an inner peace.