The Window

On my first holiday weekend at home as a college freshman, my old boyfriend and I met for a conversation. He, I’m sure, hoped that we might get back together; we didn’t. I hoped that the fresh ways I’d connected with God would inspire him in his faith journey without me. I was very young.

He picked me up in his little two-door car and we drove off with no particular destination in mind, following familiar backcountry roads as we talked, the forest dimming around us as evening wore on. As the conversation deepened, we looked for a quiet place to talk undisturbed. He turned down a one-track lane adjacent to the golf course and switched off the engine. The interior light allowed us to see as we faced one another.

We talked a long while, which is to say that I spoke enthusiastically and at length. Then, a sudden movement over his left shoulder interrupted me mid-sentence.

Two palms pressed against the driver-side window.

“Turn off the light!” I shouted, unable to see anything past the window and the impossible reality of those fleshy palms. He reached for the light switch, dropping us abruptly into darkness.

The black bear’s head became instantly visible as it peered at us through the glass. It sniffed, its hairy paws pressed against the window, claws clicking, impossibly close. Our bodies spasmed in shock as we imagined, suddenly terrified, what might happen if the glass broke under this weight.

The bear removed its paws from the window, dropping back onto all fours. It sauntered slowly around the front of the vehicle toward me. My companion called urgently, “Lock your door! Lock your door!” I looked at him in disgust for a flickering moment. Even then I knew that a locked door was not the solution to my safety. Instead, out of my Spirit-filled belief in God, I began to pray out loud, “rebuking” (the term we used at our conservative college) the bear in the name of Jesus. Undeterred, the bear continued walking toward me and stopped outside my window so that, save for the glass, our faces were inches apart. Perhaps it heard my emphatic, shouted prayers, for after a few moments it walked quietly away into the dark. We two in the car began to breathe again.

The surprising aspect of this story, when retold, is not so much that we encountered a bear. There are many bears in that remote part of the forested north. What makes me roll my eyes, embarrassed, is that neither of us thought of several painless solutions which no doubt were obvious to you, reader: (1) honk the horn, or (2) turn on the vehicle and drive away.

We knew far less about brain function forty years ago. I understood nothing of the difference between the prefrontal cortex and the brainstem, the rational brain versus the emotional brain. But during my life, in a few situations such as this, my rational brain function shut down as fear took over. All I could see was the bear.

A couple of years ago, the events of that night came freshly to mind because, to my surprise (and the surprise of those who knew us), my husband and I found ourselves suddenly in the midst of a huge change — a move of nearly 1,500 miles from our small prairie city in Saskatchewan, Canada, to Birmingham, Alabama. While we were comfortably in our known, safe space, a big opportunity sniffed us out and came to find us. Remarkably (and largely due to the support and encouragement of family and trusted friends) we did not run away.

But the steps involved in preparing for an international move are many and often felt overwhelming. Especially at night, when the dark pressed, we felt small and terrified. The windows of our imaginations filled with the scary things — “the bear” — that might hurt us or our loved ones left behind in Canada. Too many nights at 3:00 a.m., my husband especially lay awake and vulnerable, as panic ran at a low boil just under the skin.

How does one respond when fear floods and overwhelms our brains? Lock the door? Speak a suitable prayer of rebuke? Where is God during these times, or our sense of God?

The old black bear back in the woods that night deserved attention. My ex and I were right to see and respond to it. But all the power in that moment was given to the bear. Overcome by fear, we missed seeing the bigger picture with any clarity — and also missed out on the chance to receive with any sense of wonder or playfulness a truly unique encounter.

When I was a young person, my father would sometimes interrupt a long road trip by turning off the highway onto a gravel lane leading to an open garbage dump. We went in hope that we might discover a bear. On lucky days, we sat together in the car, watching one rummage around, and we would smile at one another, so glad and grateful to experience this fresh seeing.

Much of what we fear will happen to us (thanks, nonrational brainstem) is an imagined panorama of possible bad things, not the real thing. The freaky “story I’m making up in my head” can certainly suck the energy and joy out of the experiences of my daily life. In the two years since moving to Birmingham, there have been dark nights when fear filled our sight lines and shrank any capacity for hope. We have faced really hard circumstances — but in this welcoming community of the generous-hearted faithful, it’s never only been hard. With all compassion for the interplay of my neurological system, I want a vision for this embodied life that is expansive with hope, framing even our pain with Christ’s comfort and promise.

God himself felt as a human body what it meant to be vulnerable. Still, he entered fully into the risky business of living, confident that so much more was in play than could be seen. Remind me, oh remind me the next time it peers into my window, that fear is never truly the only Presence in my range of vision. It may even be that the palms pressed against the dim glass are not anything like a bear, but the hands of a loving, compassionate Savior, in whose company I need never be afraid.