EnidSong

By Enid Ning

Although I was raised in a church-going family and learned about God in Sunday School, I did not have any real experience of him until I was 12 years old.

That summer I inexplicably came down with a debilitating fear of death. It started quietly with a month-long trip to the United Arab Emirates with my parents, my three brothers and my sister. Somehow during that trip, my various insecurities evolved into a growing anxiety that was only relieved by floating on my back in the swimming pool near our house. Only there could I relax for a short time before returning to my world of tension and fear.

Following that trip I was sent to a week-long summer camp. By this time I had experienced several terrifying nightmares of suicide and corpses, and my ever-present anxiety had crystallized into an overwhelming horror of death. Up till now I had not confided in any person, nor, as far as I knew, had anyone noticed anything wrong with me. I attempted to maintain an outward composure, while inwardly drowning in wave after total wave of fear.

This unbearable situation came to a head on the second day of camp, when we had an emergency drill. Although I knew it was the standard false alarm to make sure we campers knew what to do in case someone went missing, I was seized with an overpowering dread that one of the campers had drowned, and that I would have to see the dead body. I stood in the roll call with the other campers, my hands shaking, barely avoiding mental and emotional collapse.

Afterward, my voice trembling, I confided in one of my few friends at camp, a girl named Lori who had accompanied me from school. But Lori, a happy-go-lucky sort, looked at me in puzzlement. “I don’t understand, Enid,” she responded sincerely, then ran off happily in the direction of our tent.

Left to my own devices, I wandered miserably in the large field where the roll call had taken place. At the end of my strength, I sent a desperate plea for help to the faraway God of Sunday School.

“Lord, I can’t get rid of this fear of death, but you can, so will you please get rid of it?”

It was a prayer that I completely forgot almost as soon as I prayed it, for I went on to enjoy the best week at camp I have ever had. Lori and I enjoyed a pleasant camaraderie that I had rarely experienced.

At the end of the week, as I was happily boarding the big yellow school bus to go home, it suddenly occurred to me that I had not thought about death even once since that prayer.

“Maybe I just forgot,” I thought to myself skeptically. To make sure, I immediately called to mind the most horrible image of death I could envision: opening my bedroom closet and having a dead body fall out on top of me.

There was not even an echo of fear inside me anymore. “Hmmh!” I said to myself with surprise. As the big yellow bus carried me closer and closer to home, I began to realize that this “Sunday School” God is more than just a name. Through his immediate response to my cry of desperation, I learned that he is willing and able to intervene in my life.