//Month 3, El Salvador//
One morning, at 5:50am to be exact, Kelsey and I were sitting on the sidewalk talking to Nubia waiting for breakfast to be ready. Her son brought out a bucket of trash, sat down in front of us, and started searching though it. We didn’t think too much of it until he pulled a rat out by the tail!!! He started swinging it around and part of the tail ripped off…without flinching he picked up the broken piece and twirled it with his fingers. Another girl came and also started playing with the tail. Kelsey and I were thoroughly disgusted as him mom just laughed. Some more boys came and once they saw how grossed out we were, grabbed the tail and chased me into the kitchen with it! At one point I thought for sure they were going to throw it at me and I was terrified by the thought of it landing on my shoulder. I screamed and kept running as they chased me round and round!
Then I heard Kelsey calling my name. I ran back outside to see what she was trying to tell me, and what I heard her say made me stop in my tracks. “Stephanie, it’s a root.” “What?” “It’s a root.” “A what?” “A root, Stephanie, it’s a ROOT!” A root… A root… A root?! Oh. My. Gosh. I was screaming and running away from a…root. Suddenly my fear was gone.Once I knew what it was, I wasn’t afraid of it anymore. Even though the boys still tried to scare me with it and any other twig they could find, I wasn’t afraid anymore. Why? Because I knew the truth.
And that’s how it can be in life sometimes. Things can come our way and scare the mess out of us. Satan tries to chase us down with fears like a rat tail. But once God enlightens the situation and gives us the truth, putting into proportion the real situation -that the rat was really only a root- we’re not afraid anymore.. Why? Because it would be a ridiculous fear now, right?
The devil will still try to be chasing you down with his lies and things that he’s tried to make look like something else, but when you know the truth, his games don’t even faze you anymore. Sometimes the devil tries to throw things at us. But God is bigger than any fear. And when you know the truth, then you can see that it was never a rat, but only a root the whole time. It was never a rational fear, only a stupid lie. And you don’t have to be afraid.
What is the rat tail you’ve been running from? I mean root.
