If you want to know what love looks like, follow it into a haunted house.
October is my favorite month. I delight all things pumpkin spice and apple cider. I enjoy cozy flannel and s’mores by the fire. And I love haunted houses.
Each year, I join a motley crew of haunted house fans to fill a party bus driving to one of the best haunted attractions I know, Fright Farm in Smithfield, Pennsylvania. Our squad is eclectic in the best way: a theater teacher and her husband who run escape rooms, a bartender who insists apple cider deserves extra cinnamon spirits, a gaggle of scream-till-you-pee women, a prankster always ready to provide that jump scare, and me — the one trying to rehearse bravery.
I love haunted houses because they’re my rehearsal space for courage. Maybe it’s the Enneagram 6 in me – hardwired for worst-case scenarios – or the Girl Scout focus “to help people at all times.” While others admire fake blood splatter, I’m thinking, Could I apply a tourniquet if this were real? When the scream queens bolt from the chainsaw guy, I’m muttering tactical escape plans. Mostly, I’m monitoring my pulse, practicing mindfulness breathing exercises, reminding myself: They can’t touch me. I am safe. I do it so that when real life throws me into confrontation, I can stay calm.
Last year, my fear got the best of me as we slowly entered a room filled with smoke and strobe lights. The disorienting cloud of white light made it so I couldn’t see the path ahead. I froze, and without meaning to, said, “I don’t think I can do this.”
Just then, I was aware of someone in front of me turning to face me. It was the practical joker of our crew. I braced myself for whatever trick he might try.
He didn’t laugh.
He didn’t tease.
He just held out his hand and promised:
“I’ve got you.”
I took the hand my friend lovingly offered and followed him into the blinding light.
I’ve been thinking about that moment for a year now. It flashes in my mind when a ray of sunlight hits me right in the eyes or when I watch smoke swirl after snuffing out a candle. I thought of it when I read Nan C. Merrill’s interpretation of Psalm 6 in Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness: “All of my doubts, my fears, are creating walls so that I know not love.”
Something big and holy happened in that haunted house.
Something big and holy happened in that haunted house. My fear of the unknown stopped me. My doubt about the intentions of a friend made me hesitate. But it was love that broke me free. Love that reached out to me as a hand shattering the illusionary wall my fear built.
No matter how much I practice being brave, no matter how many different breathing techniques I learn, God reminded me that my bravery or my skills will never be what saves me. Rather, love is the only way through fear. And God is love (1 John 4:8). So, in that haunted house, it was God’s steadfast love that answered the prayer I didn’t utter aloud, “I’m afraid; help me.”
I’m not going to stop practicing my breathing techniques. Try as I might, I won’t always be able to halt my racing thoughts. But what I know more deeply now than I did before I entered the haunted house, is that God is bigger than smoke and strobe lights. Bigger than my fear. Bigger than my breath. I can rest in that.
