30 Things: 3 Fears of Mine

This is a part of a series called 30 Things. Go here to keep track of each post in the series.

I scheduled this post to publish yesterday, but I must have messed up the time or something because it didn’t go up! I’m still figuring out WordPress’s fancy features.

Describe 3 legitimate fears you have and explain how they became fears.

 

1. I have a massive, totally irrational fear of sharks. My dad used to tell a story about something I did when I was little, which totally proves that I was born with this fear. Well, maybe. I don’t know if it really proves that. But I swear I have no idea where this fear stems from. Anyway, one day my dad was talking to our next door neighbor, who he apparently didn’t know very well. At some point the neighbor was like, “Hey, I was talking to your daughter and she told me what happened to your son. I’m really sorry.” My dad was confused because at the time he didn’t have a son. He asked the neighbor what he meant. The neighbor was like, “She told me how you went to the ocean and how your son was eaten by that shark. That’s just terrible.” I couldn’t have been more than five at the time this took place. I have no memory of this exchange happening and I have no idea where this story came from. All I know is that I cannot even look at a picture of a shark without getting a shot of adrenaline and freezing up. If a video or a picture of a shark catches me off guard, I’ll jump and sometimes scream. It’s ridiculous. Shark Week is pretty much the worst week of the year for me. My siblings used to hide Jaws or Deep Blue Sea under my car seats so I’d stumble across them and get freaked out. I can’t even touch a picture of a shark; My hand freezes up and I feel like I have bugs crawling all over me. Ugh, I’m freaked out just thinking about it!
2. I’m afraid that every ache or pain that I have is the beginning of a heart attack, or a stroke, or an aneurysm bursting, or a blood clot traveling to my lungs or basically anything that will result in my death. I’m not so irrational with this fear that I let it affect my quality of life, but I can’t help but feel a twinge of fear over unexplained pain and/or discomfort because I’m afraid that I’m about to drop dead.
3. I fear God’s judgment. To be honest, I initially put “heights” as my third fear, but that’s not what I really wanted to say. (Although I am afraid of heights.) It was just easier to say. I don’t really have a desire to get into a theological conversation about this fear, which is why I considered leaving it out. But when it came time to come up with a third fear, my heart was very persistent about this one. So here it is.