Core Fears

Usually by this point, post my Market-to-Market 76-mile relay race, I would have written a fun and semi-raunchy blog post documenting the experience.  And, I'm sure I will complete with pictures and descriptions of my crazy, amazing teammates.

But not until, I process what happened last week.

It rocked me and my family to the core.

Our neighbor discovered someone peering into our window.  Which launched police being called, motion detector lights being installed, talks with the kids about strangers and anxiety the likes that I haven't felt in a very long time emerging.

Do you have a nightmare or a worst case scenario...something that if God forbid it ever happened, you're certain that you'd never recover from?

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is the inability to protect my children.  I have dreams about how I would rescue all three of them if there was a fire or my exit strategy if we had an in-home invasion.  As a child of the John Joubert generation and later as an adult learning about the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard and the three young girls that Ariel Castro held captive for years...there is a visceral part of me that wants to vomit and die thinking about the prospect of that kind of Hell being a reality for my children and my family.  I know that every parent feels the same.

And so when we experienced this violation, my first inclination was to pull the kids out of school, board up the windows, take on home schooling and never let them leave my sight.  Until my husband proclaimed, we absolutely will not live in fear.  We can take security precautions, but we will live our lives...that means that we'll mow our lawn, water our plants, play in our backyard, ride our bikes, talk to our neighbors, engage our mail carrier, laugh and live and so help me God if that rat bastard has any inclination to return, I'll strangle him with my bare hands...that sort of made me feel better.

And now, I have to wake up and remember that scary, hard things happen but we don't have to be paralyzed by them.  The mark of living is the choice to be resilient, to decide that there is too much good to be mired in the taste of the bad.

I will seek to be courageous, even though I feel afraid.  And will also remember, that at the end of the day, when it comes to my kids, I am a lioness.  Heaven help you if you try to put them in harms way. Because there is no question that I will fuck you up and make you wish that you'd never lied eyes on us.

See, I already feel better.