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If you want to know what cave syndrome is, here you go, ‘Cave Syndrome’ Keeps the Vaccinated in Social Isolation‘

Basically what it amounts to is that fear always begats more fear. And then it just continues to grow bigger and more powerful. And the thing about power, well, it never relinquishes control without a fight. Also, the more you feed it, the bigger it gets. I empathize with this article on account of having a bit of ”cave syndrome” myself, long before covid was ever a thing. I don’t ever want to leave the cave and go out among the mad people, but I do it anyway.

Long ago I had this brutal fear of snakes, the kind of thing where one may have crawled across our deck and now the deck must be dismantled and burned to ashes because it is forever contaminated with the cooties of a thousand snakes. I was quite content with this fear too, it was liveable, it did not interfere with my life much, and it was even fashionable. If one is afraid of toadstools or fluffy bunnies or something, that is a bit different, but being pathologically terrified of snakes is somewhat ”normal.”

So, I did not set out to cure my fear of snakes at all. I was just reading Mark one day, came upon, ‘‘they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well,” and I simply remarked to the Lord, ”that is great literary device, an apt metaphor, poetic wordplay.” In fact I believe I actually quipped something like, I’m all in Lord, everything but the snakes.

It’s a bit funny looking back how I knew something was awry, that I had said or thought something I shouldn’t have, and now I had the Lord’s full attention, but sure enough that’s what it was, and suddenly there were snakes everywhere. It was quite melodramatic for me at the time, but you have to remember how ever so gentle this was. Our snakes are generally not poisonous, usually these slender pencil things, and rarely seen, but I would open the car door and there would be a little snake curled up on the ground poised ready to…..just sit there and totally freak me out. I would go to the mail box and there would be 3 little snakes sunning themselves. I saw more snakes in a 3 month period then I had ever seen in my entire life. One even slid across my shoe when I was out walking and I did not pass out or even scream. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was slowly being desensitized to the very idea of the existence of snakes, with such patience, with such incredible love, that it still takes my breath away.

I’m not terribly fond of snakes, they still startle me, but I have now handled a few and pet some, and when they slither into the underbrush when I am walking, I tend to just smile because they remind me of that incredible love, the infinite patience that slowly led me though my snake terrors, for no apparent reason except perhaps to reassure me that God’s word is His word and that He can be trusted with it.

Honestly, the only way past fear, is to walk right through it.

How we are leading people during this covid thing, what we are doing to them psychologically and emotionally, is an abomination. Just makes blood boil.

But the other half of the story is that we are all without excuse.