For some reason, the last decade or so has brought about a fear that strikes me in the middle of the night and no, it’s not the monsters lurking under my bed or creeping in my closet that scare me. What keeps me up at night is the possibility that a stranger might break into my house.

Now I’ve never had a break in actually happen to me before. I didn’t watch some scary movie that scarred me for life. I only know that this fear has bothered me in every house I’ve lived in since I can remember and there’s no rhyme or reason as to which nights I’ll lay awake because of it.

The teensy tiniest noise can set off my paranoia-causing a now very skilled witch hunt. I own a cat, and far too many times has he knocked something down right as I was about to fall asleep. Typically what happens is I hear something or just happen to wonder if the doors were all locked earlier that night. I get up exhaustingly slow in order to be as quiet as possible and (in the house I currently live in) make my way to the top of the stairs so I can better listen for bad guys. Eventually, after maybe ten minutes of hearing nothing, I decide no one has intruded. What do I do then? I still proceed to go down stairs and check all the doors just to make sure, rather than letting my paranoia go.

So many times I’ve tried to tell myself “It’s not statistically likely for someone to purposefully target us, we aren’t super rich and no one adamantly hates us.” What’s more is that I seem to have a family who is immune to this fear and can sleep through literally anything, which doesn’t help my fear because then I have to think about how I can save them too if something were to happen.

The problem this poses is more than just lack of sleep. It poses for me a lack of trust in God. I try and try to stay in bed, let go of my fear, and just talk to God in prayer until I fall asleep. Sometimes it actually works, but not as often as I’d like. One night it was so bad and I knew I was safe, but I couldn’t shake the fear. Instead of just praying I turned to the Bible, searching for truths about God and how He conquers all.

In this search I ended up with Exodus 15:16, 23:27, Deuteronomy 4:39, and an understanding that my job is to remember what God has already done and know that He will take care of the rest. Yes, there are so many other passages I could turn to such as Psalm 23:4, Philippians 4:6-7, or Matthew 6:25 and they are all very applicable. However, I think the reason the Exodus and Deuteronomy passages helped so much for my situation is that they reminded me of why I should put my trust in God; the God that performed miracles in Egypt and the same God that cares so much as to interact with a fallen creation.

Don’t just take my word for it though. Search for these truths for yourself, so you can have something to fall back on when you find yourself afraid.