Needing Light
It would be difficult for me to talk about light without any mention of darkness. The dictionary describes it as the “natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible”. Little wonder, the picture of a lit bulb signifies a revelation or a new understanding. Additionally, light is the absence of darkness. A blind man can be outside in the sunshine and yet remain in total darkness. Physical blindness is bad but the worst kind of blindness would be when a person is unable to perceive with his mind.
I haven’t always been afraid of darkness. I think it started sometime when I was about 9 or 10 years old. I remember quite vividly being on holiday at my friend Elizabeth’s house. They had moved away from Jos and were now in Yola. She had a big brother who was reading this book titled “Ghosts go Haunting”. I had no clue what the book was about and wasn’t in the least bit interested. Her brother however decided to gather us children for bedtime stories, it was “Ghosts go Haunting”. I can’t remember the story line but it left me absolutely scared. That night, I had a terrible nightmare that had me screaming down the house. I could have sworn that the ghost in the story had come by my bedside with a lantern on its head. The whole house woke up to my scream!! Everyone was startled and Elis’ (pronounced Ay’lee) dad tried his best to pacify me. Just my luck too, the electricity went off and we were plunged into darkness. Eli’s dad had to grab his torch light and search round the girls’ room to ensure no ghost was lurking anywhere. The next day, I observed some little footprints in the concrete floor on the upstairs balcony. That was my unshaken evidence that the ghost had been in the house.
Looking back now, it’s actually hilarious to think that I had believed that the ghost had made footprints on the hard concrete. That’s the power of fear. It makes the ridiculous seem real. I could easily equate fear with darkness as against light with knowledge. Somehow, I found out that I had become afraid of being alone in the dark, especially at night.
In the university, sleeping in my room alone wasn’t much of a problem as I always had room mates. After leaving home for my NYSC was when I felt really challenged for the first time. I had a beautifully furnished room but couldn’t sleep in it alone. What was I afraid of? To be honest, looking back now, I’m not even sure what the problem was. Why couldn’t I ever sleep? I would wake up in the middle of the night, look at the table clock and realise it was only 2 am. I would look towards the window and the door. My mind would always play terrible tricks on me. I would imagine someone walking into the room through the wall. I was also unfortunately unable to sleep with the lights on. I needed a darkened room but was afraid of being alone in the dark. This meant the light had to be on through the night. It was a lose-lose situation for me; a double tragedy. The result was constant headaches for lack of sleep. It was a problem I was too embarrassed to discuss with anyone. I remember plucking up the courage and telling my friend Rita. She shared some scriptures from the Bible with me but I could tell she wasn’t very impressed by my reaction. She concluded by saying, a change could only come when you are able to believe it and told me not to worry. How true her statement was to be!!
My freedom came eventually and quite uneventfully. One day I was reading the Bible and came across a scripture in Colossians 3:3b , It said:
“…. your life is now hidden in Christ and in God”
It was a light bulb moment for me. I had read that scripture so many times over in the Bible but never quite seen it like that. All of a sudden, it made sense and it began to address all my fears. The interpretation for me was that
“If I was now a Christian, then it meant I was under a new government. I had handed my life over to Jesus Christ and He now had full responsibility for it. He has hidden me in Himself and hidden Himself in God. He had me covered all round. Nothing and no one could touch me without first touching Him. Everything that would want to touch me would need to be vetted by Him first”.
That was how I got delivered from the fear of sleeping alone in my room in the dark.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of my romance with fear. It was to revisit me later in life as a wife and a mother. I was soon plagued by the fear of flying. I had always loved flying as a child and never thought anything of it. I’m not sure where this new fear came from but it could have been because of my interest in watching Air Crash Investigations on TV. I was so fascinated by the documentaries and got quite knowledgeable about things that could go wrong with a flight. In one episode, there was a spring that got worn out in the tail of the plane that led to its crashing. Almost everyone died and the few survivors were traumatised. In another, the tyres didn’t come out at the right time and resulted in fatal crash with many casualties. For another, it was a fire that started unseen in the propellers under the wings. I had an overload of information that I really didn’t need and it wasn’t doing me much good. Every time I stepped on a plane, this encyclopedia of dark knowledge would start running through my mind. I would never ever choose a window seat but if by some misfortune I was assigned one, I would nicely offer it to the centre person. Left to me, the window shutter would forever remain pulled down. As much as possible, I would try not to look through the window.
It always seemed like we were forever flying over some ocean. Yes, I would imagine crashing into the ocean. Sometimes I would debate about which one would be better, the ocean or the mountains? To be honest, neither was good but I felt I might have stood a better chance with the mountains seeing I wasn’t a good swimmer. The worst would be the turbulent flights. Oh I hated them. How could people sit calmly and watch films when we were about to crash? How could anyone sleep? Sometimes I would literally start trembling with fear. Other times I would get a runny stomach. Fear is truly a torment. I was in a battle and I needed a winning strategy. Nobody really knew what I was going through. It was always a relief when we came in for the landing. The knots in my stomach would loosen. I had survived another trip.
I remember a particularly turbulent flight. I was returning from a visit with my mum in Jos, Nigeria. It was a six and a half hour flight and halfway through, I started crying. I was just so fed up and tired of being afraid of flying. I told God, “I can’t continue like this. You have to do something”. This is not normal. How can an adult be so terrified of flying? I looked at the cabin crew and wondered why anyone would ever choose such a dangerous career. I wondered how they could bear to fly almost everyday out of choice. I eventually asked one of the ladies, a youngish pretty girl from Birmingham. I asked her if she loved her job. Her face said it all, it lit up. She said she couldn’t imagine doing anything else. She had been flying for about two years and was looking forward to many more years. My heart sank even deeper for myself. I thought she was absolutely insane.
I also remember when we went to Malaga on a family holiday. This time around, I had my husband and three children with me. I needed to play the part. I told them I was okay and that fear was a thing of the past. It was a short flight and I loved it, 2.5 hours only. The return flight was a bit bumpy and everyone was turning and giving me some concerning looks. Looking at their faces, it seemed they were all judging me. My daughter turned across from her seat and smiled at me. I snapped, “what? I’m fine”. My husband put his arms around me comfortingly, I snapped again, “I’m fine”. When we got home, my daughter said, “Mum you didn’t look fine to me”. Lol
I am happy to report that I enjoyed my 9 hour flight to Florida, the longest flight I have ever undertaken. My faith has helped me greatly. It didn’t happen overnight. It has been a long slow journey. I can’t say I am 100% out of the woods yet but I can honestly say, I have come a long way. It started on the day I chatted with the air hostess. What she said stuck with me. She loved her job, she loved flying, she chose to fly everyday – how bizarre was that! How could a young twenty something year old enjoy flying and not me? How could I, who claimed to “know God” and all that He had to offer be bound up by so much fear? I knew it was a trick on my mind and I started attacking this fear vigorously. I knew I needed a shift with my mindset. My mind needed retraining and refocusing. I needed to get rid of all the junk in it and put in some new information. By now, I had stopped watching Air Crash Investigations. I started looking at scriptures from the Bible that promised me protection. Some of my favourite ones were:
2 Tim 1:7
For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
This verse confirmed to me that the unhealthy fear I had was a reality to contend with. It also didn’t come from God and I needed to deliberately refuse its operation in my life. I started concentrating my efforts on learning the promises of God to me and speaking them to myself. I printed them off and kept them visible to my eyes around the house. I learnt this concept from the Bible where it says we should have the word in sight at all times, even pasted on our foreheads (figuratively) if necessary. The more I spent time reading them, the more their truths became real to me. I began to have hope. I was daring to believe that deliverance was in sight. Some other scriptures I liked were
Is 41:10
Do not be afraid — I am with you! I am your God — let nothing terrify you! I will make you strong and help you; I will protect you and save you.
Is 43:1-2
“… Do not be afraid — I will save you. I have called you by name — you are mine. 2When you pass through deep waters, I will be with you; your troubles will not overwhelm you. When you pass through fire, you will not be burnt; the hard trials that come will not hurt you.”
I remember the 9 hour flight. As I sat in my seat, a wave of fear swept over me. I just calmly started speaking to myself. “Hennang, you have a sound mind. You don’t have a spirit of fear. Your life is hidden in Christ and in God. God is with you, He is not a liar. He will protect you, through the waters, over the Atlantic Ocean, He will not allow anything to harm you”..
The battle line had been drawn. I became my own personal shrink as I calmed myself down with prayer. It was amazing. Every time the fear started welling up, I would go through the same exercise. I survived the 9 hours and I am still surviving. I was watching the Oprah Winfrey show some time later and realised she was promoting the same Biblical principles I had discovered. In it, she said if you wanted something bigger than you, the best thing to do was to have a visible picture of it around you. You would then audibly speak out what you wanted and eventually, it would come to you. I was amazed that even the world system had discovered this truth.
Fear is a terrible task master. I rejoice with everyone who has never been plagued by it. It can be completely irrational and senseless. For some like me, it might not be the fear of darkness or of flying. It could be the fear of failure or of not meeting up with peoples’ expectations. The principle to combat fear remains largely the same. Fear steals our peace, steals our joy, steals our equilibrium. It never ever solves the problem, only creates an illusion. The solution is a renewing of the mind. People can be kept hostage by what they have wrongly believed. Don’t believe a wrong narrative. Don’t allow it to play and replay in your head. Sing a new song. Let the light shine and dispel the darkness of your mind. Search out the Bible.
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