Halloween, Pooh Bear, and Fear

Last night was our first Halloween as a family of four. Now, families all approach Halloween in different ways. There are some that will dress up their kids, but they themselves will only offer a slight nod to the costume tradition, if any at all. For these parents, a Halloween-themed shirt will suffice, as it's their kids that are actually the centerpiece of the evening, they're the ones that are heading up to front doors, bags outstretched, eager to see what goodies will be dumped in there. Other parents might don a pair of cat or lion ears and paint some whiskers on their face, or do some other type of halfway costume. This is normally because by the time they finished sewing on every last sequin on the princess costume (which, incidentally, was chosen one day earlier, as up to that point we were supposed to be wearing a girl pirate costume, until somebody changed her mind), it was all the parent could do to swipe an eyeliner pen across his or her face as everyone is running out the door.

And then there's the Vias. Neither my wife nor I grew up doing Halloween half-heartedly, and so now that we have kids, we get to relive our memories, and in 3-D, no less. As you can see to the right, our inspiration came from none other than The Hundred Acre Wood. If Caylah had her druthers, she would have worn that costume from first "up" when we bought it to final "night-night" time, every day it wasn't "icky." As for me, my Pooh Bear costume was piecemealed from thrift stores across town, teaching me that trying to find yellow pants in my size was a task more appropriate for Sherlock Holmes that a suburban father. Nevertheless, we ventured out to take on our block, determined to not return until the candy was ours.

On the whole, my daughter was a rock star. She would bound up each set of stairs to front door after front door, shamelessly using her cuteness to persuade each neighbor to give her their best candy. Mark my words, the girl will be training others in the neighborhood on the shameless use of cute before kindergarten.

When we got to a house about halfway along, however, she changed. The people in that house had constructed a haunted maze in their garage, populating it with some pretty scary characters, complete with ghouls in black robes, ready to freak out whoever would dare approach the interactive display. And "freak out" they did, at least Caylah. I'm sure the man in the black robe, black mask, and long nails that Freddy Krueger himself would have envied, was a nice man, but all my daughter could see was evil personified and she wasn't about to go anywhere near it. In fact, the rest of the evening, she wouldn't let me put her down to go to other doors, and all she could talk about was "that man scary."

My wife and I were talking later about where she might have learned to be scared of that ghoulish figure. We weren't scared of him. I don't think we even said anything like, "Ooooh, Caylah, that man's scary!" trying to get her to go along with the night. I think she was just plain scared. And as many times as we tried to tell her that it was ok, she was still scared. I told her that he wouldn't hurt her, but she still wouldn't have anything to do with him, clinging to me, in fact.

What is it about fear? There's the healthy fear that (sometimes) tells my daughter that jumping off the stairs might not be such a good idea, but this was different. This was the fear that someone (or something) could physically harm her. And it doesn't seem that it's a learned reaction. This is inborn, like smiling or laughing.

Unfortunately, I think fear is just a part of the human condition. Adam talks about being afraid in Genesis 3, and I wonder if fear was a result of the Fall. We don't see it mentioned before that, so it makes me think it didn't exist until then. And as many times as the Lord says, "Do not fear," we still continue to be driven by that emotion far more often than we should. It can be paralyzing, causing us to cling to what we know or what is familiar. It can be crippling as fathers, for sure, this fear thing.

This is much easier said than done, but it's important for us as dads to figure out what's worth being afraid of, and which things are...just halloween costumes. For me, it's important to try and discern the difference - pray, find Truth from the Bible, ask other people who have done this before. I do know, however, that the more I find myself strapped down by fear, the worse off I am as a father. So it's important for me to do whatever I can to move past it and strive to be the kind of father that I am called to be.


What about you? Do you ever feel like you're strapped down by fear? What have you done to move past it?