Isaiah 43

Do not fear,
for I have redeemed you
I have called you by name
and you are mine

It's been about a month, but I thought that I had helped Mason work through his fear of pumpkins. My parents' neighbors put up a harvest display at the beginning of October and my mom wanted to get Mason's picture with it. But Mason refused and told my mom and I that he was scared of pumpkins. I wanted to giggle when he said it (because it sounded just that cute), but I could tell he was serious. So for the entire month of October, we discussed pumpkins - and it seemed to work - he even revisited the harvest display without fear! So Monday, we headed to our annual pilgrimage to Burt's Pumpkin Farm and all was well - an entire field of orange pumpkins and not a peep out of Mason about being scared. So we went on the tractor-pulled hayride and it was great until we stopped and two giant pumpkins began to talk! I thought Mason was going to come out of his skin! The fear had returned - and who could blame him - the one thing you fear most suddenly appears and not only is it three times its regular size, it also talks - a nightmare come true.
So we will continue to work on Mason's fears - the pumpkins are just the beginning - there's scarecrows, shadows, monsters, and things he hasn't even discovered he's scared of yet. I guess Mitch better learn the guitar chords to Isaiah 43 because it's going to become our home's theme song.