Of Mice and God
I don't have time to put up a true post; today I'm finishing up my summer classes and packing for Catalina, Long Beach, and Ontario. Catalina first. Oh my gosh. The smell alone. Three nights, four days (at least) and our fifth wedding anniversary spent on the island.
But I will say this: I was scared, very scared, of hantavirus since the mice appeared. Irrationally scared. But more frightened, I would say triggered, than I had been in years. My wife, who has known me nine years almost to the day, said she had never seen me that scared. Somehow, someway, a very young part of me came out.
A couple of things: one, I opened up to her in a way I probably never have, embarassed as I was of my fear, I shared some childhood memories of being left home alone with bugs at four; of my mother telling me if I touched my mouth to a drinking fountain I'd get trench mouth (and I still don't know what the hell that is, but I'm still afraid to touch my mouth to drinking fountains)...and the emotions, the young emotions, came pouring. S handled it as well as any person possibly could. I expected, judgement, ridicule, what I would have gotten from my parents, my mother especially. What I got was a tender and supportive touch.
It was a moment I will not forget.
Two, I prayed. When my fear was so bad I was laying in bed sweating, nearly shaking, unable to eat, in a state which felt almost exactly like grief, I prayed. With S. It must have been one of the oddest prayers sent off this blue rock that day; I asked God to get all the mice out of my house. We could hear one squeaking somewhere in the bathroom next to our bedroom and we just shut the door. Eventually, I fell asleep.
How was it that deer mice, which are nocturnal, were all in the middle of my living room floor at 3 in the afternoon that day (before I prayed, true) and that I just scooped them up in a dustpan and tossed them out? My dog found one more that night in the living room closet, and he got tossed. The squeaker in the bathroom we never found. And we've looked.
I cleaned up the droppings under the sink with enough bleach and lysol to kill anything, bagged up the droppings and double-bagged; I know I was scared but I was doing the best I could. I put out four mouse traps with peanut butter in all the places we'd seen something.
But you know, not one mouse showed up in my traps. My exterminator came today, and it felt like Dad coming home. God how I needed it. I told him what I was scared of, and he kind of laughed and dismissed it. He looked everywhere in our kitchen. No new droppings. No sign of mice at all. It is reassuring to know that poison is now under my house and in my shed. That's why we pay the guy. To kill things.
What I'm saying is this: I broke through on a deep childhood fear, much more intense even than coit tower, and I worked through it with help from my spouse and a good friend in a way that brought me closer to Steph. And I prayed, and since I prayed there has not been a mouse anywhere in my house as far as we can tell; even my exterminator didn't see anything or even any signs of mice.
Could it be that God listened to my irrational terror-filled prayer? Or that he foresaw my terror (I would have stayed in a motel if I'd seen any more mice in my house I swear) and had every mouse in my house waiting in a ten square foot area when I came home in the middle of the day? Whatever, they couldn't have been in the house more than a couple of days. And there have been none since. Not one squeak, not one new dropping. And since I saw the exterminator I feel much, much better.
The skeptic in me could tear the hell out of this story. Fine. They probably came in through the open back door and after we saw them we shut that so no more came in. But that's not what this blog is about. It's about relationship. And I prayed, and there have been no more mice, and I'm coming out of the fear...
And I'm going to Catalina. My friends are all there right now. It's a good thing.
But I have to go. I just wanted everybody to know I was okay, more than okay maybe.
Be well all. Blog will be silent for a couple weeks. Wish I had left a better post for everyone to stare at, but I don't have time.
t
But I will say this: I was scared, very scared, of hantavirus since the mice appeared. Irrationally scared. But more frightened, I would say triggered, than I had been in years. My wife, who has known me nine years almost to the day, said she had never seen me that scared. Somehow, someway, a very young part of me came out.
A couple of things: one, I opened up to her in a way I probably never have, embarassed as I was of my fear, I shared some childhood memories of being left home alone with bugs at four; of my mother telling me if I touched my mouth to a drinking fountain I'd get trench mouth (and I still don't know what the hell that is, but I'm still afraid to touch my mouth to drinking fountains)...and the emotions, the young emotions, came pouring. S handled it as well as any person possibly could. I expected, judgement, ridicule, what I would have gotten from my parents, my mother especially. What I got was a tender and supportive touch.
It was a moment I will not forget.
Two, I prayed. When my fear was so bad I was laying in bed sweating, nearly shaking, unable to eat, in a state which felt almost exactly like grief, I prayed. With S. It must have been one of the oddest prayers sent off this blue rock that day; I asked God to get all the mice out of my house. We could hear one squeaking somewhere in the bathroom next to our bedroom and we just shut the door. Eventually, I fell asleep.
How was it that deer mice, which are nocturnal, were all in the middle of my living room floor at 3 in the afternoon that day (before I prayed, true) and that I just scooped them up in a dustpan and tossed them out? My dog found one more that night in the living room closet, and he got tossed. The squeaker in the bathroom we never found. And we've looked.
I cleaned up the droppings under the sink with enough bleach and lysol to kill anything, bagged up the droppings and double-bagged; I know I was scared but I was doing the best I could. I put out four mouse traps with peanut butter in all the places we'd seen something.
But you know, not one mouse showed up in my traps. My exterminator came today, and it felt like Dad coming home. God how I needed it. I told him what I was scared of, and he kind of laughed and dismissed it. He looked everywhere in our kitchen. No new droppings. No sign of mice at all. It is reassuring to know that poison is now under my house and in my shed. That's why we pay the guy. To kill things.
What I'm saying is this: I broke through on a deep childhood fear, much more intense even than coit tower, and I worked through it with help from my spouse and a good friend in a way that brought me closer to Steph. And I prayed, and since I prayed there has not been a mouse anywhere in my house as far as we can tell; even my exterminator didn't see anything or even any signs of mice.
Could it be that God listened to my irrational terror-filled prayer? Or that he foresaw my terror (I would have stayed in a motel if I'd seen any more mice in my house I swear) and had every mouse in my house waiting in a ten square foot area when I came home in the middle of the day? Whatever, they couldn't have been in the house more than a couple of days. And there have been none since. Not one squeak, not one new dropping. And since I saw the exterminator I feel much, much better.
The skeptic in me could tear the hell out of this story. Fine. They probably came in through the open back door and after we saw them we shut that so no more came in. But that's not what this blog is about. It's about relationship. And I prayed, and there have been no more mice, and I'm coming out of the fear...
And I'm going to Catalina. My friends are all there right now. It's a good thing.
But I have to go. I just wanted everybody to know I was okay, more than okay maybe.
Be well all. Blog will be silent for a couple weeks. Wish I had left a better post for everyone to stare at, but I don't have time.
t
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