The Wind Frightens One Of Mine

She is not being difficult. You know that, and you have had to say it out loud to people who did not know it.

When it is windy she will not go out, and it is not a preference and it is not a performance. Something in her genuinely does not cope with it, and she is eight, and eight year olds do not have much say over what frightens them.

So on windy days the household stays in. And that has been happening for long enough that windy days have become a category, and in this part of the world there are a great many of them.

Which means one child's real fear is now setting the schedule of five people, and nobody has ever said that out loud, and you have felt it and not known what to do with it because the alternative sounded cruel.

I want to give you a third option, because I do not think you have been offered one.

Peace, be still

There is a moment in Mark where wind and fear are both in the boat, and the order of what happens is the part worth noticing.

And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith? (Mark 4:39-40, King James Version)

He rebuked the wind first.

Not the men. The weather. The first thing that happens is that the frightening thing is addressed, and only afterward is there any conversation with the people about their fear.

You are looking at an order that puts the fear second, and it was never the frightened one who got dealt with first in that boat. Mark 4:39 stills the wind before a word is said to anybody about faith, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as tenderness rather than as a rebuke of anybody afraid.

And notice something else. The men in that boat were experienced. Several of them had fished that water their whole lives, and they were frightened, and the account does not treat that as ridiculous.

You have a household where being frightened is not a character failing, and it was never treated as one by anybody who mattered. The written word records seasoned men afraid of weather without any contempt for them, and the Spirit of God is what keeps an eight year old from becoming a problem in her own home.

Honoring is not obeying

Now here is the distinction that I think will change your week.

Honoring a fear means taking it seriously. Believing her. Not making her go. Not calling it silly, not saying you will be fine, not bribing her past it.

Obeying a fear means the fear decides. And when a fear decides, it grows, because it has been shown that it works, and it also starts making decisions for people who do not have it.

A real fear can be honored without being obeyed, and those two have never been the same thing.

You are able to believe her completely and still open the door, and it was never a betrayal of a frightened child to take her sister outside. Mark 4 addresses the wind and then speaks to the men separately, which is exactly why the Spirit of God will not let one fear and one household become the same object.

And the honest bit: her fear is not going to be argued out of her, and nothing in this article is going to fix it. What can change is who it governs.

What that looks like on a windy Tuesday

So here is the practical part and it is two separate things, which is the whole point.

On windy days, the others go. You or somebody takes whoever wants to go, for ten minutes, and she stays with the other adult or in the house, and nobody makes anything of it. No sighing, no explaining to her what she is missing, no report when you come back.

You are able to run two arrangements at once, and it has never once been a rejection of a child to go outside without her. The passage handles the weather and the people as two separate matters, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a mother taking two out and leaving one in without any of it being a punishment.

And on still days, she goes. And that is the part that matters most, and it is easy to lose. Take her out, specifically, on days when there is nothing in the air, and let her have a long ordinary run of outdoors that has nothing frightening in it at all.

Because at the moment the two are welded together in her: outdoors and wind. Separating them is not therapy and it is not a technique. It is just giving her a great many quiet outdoor afternoons, so that outside is not one thing.

You are giving her the ordinary version, and it has never once required the frightening version to be faced for the ordinary one to count. Mark 4:39 says peace, be still to the weather and leaves the people to be spoken to separately, and the Spirit of God is the one who is out on a still evening with a mother and one careful child.