{"id":306,"date":"2011-11-22T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-22T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/8b00fb53-822b-4771-8b8c-2a530178ca50"},"modified":"2017-11-27T23:49:40","modified_gmt":"2017-11-28T04:49:40","slug":"and-a-child-shall-lead-them-the-art-of-facing-your-fears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thewonderchildblog.com\/?p=306","title":{"rendered":"And a Child Shall Lead Them: The Art of Facing Your Fears"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Fear roamed the streets in the form of a pack of starving lions.\u00a0 Ribs quivering, tails dragging, they stalked the shadows in search of easy prey.\u00a0 Their yellow eyes scanned the alley ways and doorways, searching for the hesitant ones, the ones who needed to rise from the two-step in front of their apartment and live a new life, but instead remained glued to the spot, lost in the hypnotic gaze of future worries.\u00a0 The starving lions sniffed out the ones just about to get up and make a change, and slunk in front of them and sat on their haunches, and stared them back down.\u00a0 But the people did not see starving lions; they saw the forms of those they knew ready to tell them that they were crazy, that they would never make it, and that they were not good enough.\u00a0 They took the forms of images of failure and destitution, and the more the people let those images stalk their minds, the more the starving lions feasted on their dreams, devouring them with gleeful fervor.\u00a0 One of the lions of fear glided towards a child who wanted to leap into a pile of crisp, red and orange leaves, but was too afraid of getting bit by a tick to actually jump in.\u00a0 He stood there hating himself for having such obsessive fears.\u00a0 He heard the voices of his parents in his head telling him all about the horrors of Lyme\u2019s disease and deer ticks, yet he always wanted to play in the leaves.\u00a0 The sky was crystal clear and blue and the leaves glowed like a pile of treasure.\u00a0 The lion brushed passed the boy\u2019s legs and licked its lips, about to gorge itself on the boy\u2019s dreams of playing in the leaves.\u00a0 And then it happened.\u00a0 The boy looked the lion straight in the eyes.\u00a0 The lion blinked.\u00a0 No one had ever done that before.\u00a0 People weren\u2019t supposed to see fears for what they really were.\u00a0 This boy was staring back, and, much to the shock of the lion was smiling.\u00a0 The boy took a step towards the lion.\u00a0 The lion snarled.\u00a0 The boy laughed and then tussled the lion\u2019s greasy mane.\u00a0 The lion was incredulous, and yet it felt something surge within its ribs\u2014something alive.\u00a0 The boy had had enough of not living the life he always dreamed of.\u00a0 \u201cI can do a tick-check,\u201d he thought, and turned from the lion and leapt into the leaves in a huge, splash of autumn glory.\u00a0 He laughed with joy and when he looked at the lion it was no longer a starving, rib-exposed ghost.\u00a0 It was golden.\u00a0 It was majestic and the form of bravery itself.\u00a0 It let out a roar of triumph that sent the approaching pack of starving lions scattering like mice.\u00a0 The boy dove back into the leaves laughing, and then popped his head up blowing a yellow leaf from his face.\u00a0 The leaf sailed and settled onto the lion\u2019s head like a little crown.\u00a0 \u201cCome on in!\u201d the boy shouted. The lion smiled, flicked his tail, twitched its ears, and then roared, leaping into the pile and rolling with the boy like a puppy, happy to be truly full, truly alive, truly itself. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Fear roamed the streets in the form of a pack of starving lions.\u00a0 Ribs quivering, tails dragging, they stalked the shadows in search of easy prey.\u00a0 Their yellow eyes scanned the alley ways and doorways, searching for the hesitant ones, the ones who needed to rise from the two-step in front of their apartment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,16],"tags":[471,1069,1070,330,1071,1066,1068,1067,1072,414,1073],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewonderchildblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewonderchildblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewonderchildblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewonderchildblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewonderchildblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/thewonderchildblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1760,"href":"http:\/\/thewonderchildblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/1760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thewonderchildblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewonderchildblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thewonderchildblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}