Bats In Your Bed

“Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?” Those were my husband’s words~ and I wanted to punch him.

It was 2am. I don’t know what woke me, but I sat up in bed. Our bedroom door was open to our living room and in the darkness it almost looked like a light was bouncing off of our living room walls. I grabbed my phone, turned on its flashlight and got out of bed. (Don’t ask me why I was brave enough to go check out a potential burglar, while my husband was fast asleep.)

I shined the flashlight into the living room, illuminating the cause of the bouncing light effect. A bat was flying back and forth in front of our open window and to my horror, when it spotted my light, it flew directly at me. I quickly jumped back into bed but that crazy bat followed me into our bed.

By now you probably know that my house isn’t decorated in a “normal” style. 🤣 I love 17th century antiques. We sleep in an enclosed “Scrooge bed” as Mike calls it, complete with four posts and curtains on all sides.
That bat was flying around above me inside that bed, and Mike was still fast asleep.

I started screaming his name and shaking him. In his sleepy state he sat up, which startled the bat who then flew toward the foot of the bed right into one of the curtains. It caught him and he plummeted to the floor.

Mike never saw a thing.

We turned every light on in the house, but after shaking every one of those bed curtains and all my blankets multiple times, we never found the bat.

Of course, Mike was sure I dreamt the whole thing. I got even angrier (there might’ve been a few tears too) and ended up sleeping on the floor in the bathroom. Mike slept soundly in the bed all night.

In the morning, I found the bat, alive and well, hanging upside down on one of my kitchen cupboards.

Here’s the thing. I didn’t have the confidence Mike had. I wanted proof that the bat was found and taken care of. I wasn’t going to take Mike’s word that (IF there was a bat 🙄), it would leave us alone. I knew that bat was in there somewhere but because I couldn’t find it, my actions were not pretty. I couldn’t rest until it was found.

That’s exactly how we need to be with God’s word. Do we know why we believe what we believe or are we just taking someone’s word for it, and going with that.

You might’ve been raised in a Christian home and gone to church your whole life. You believed the words of your pastor or parents and based your own beliefs on the words of someone else, never really knowing why you believe them yourself. You might have married someone that has strong beliefs and taken their word that their way was the right way. Even now you might be raising your children to honor God and Country, but aren’t really teaching them to know why they believe what they believe.

In this day and age, it is so very important to teach our children to know the “why’s”. It’s important to teach them to study God’s words, because the world will always have questions and we need to have the right answers. God’s answers. It’s not enough to say~”well, that’s what my parents always taught me” or “that’s what my church teaches”. We shouldn’t be content to “rest” in our beliefs until we have the proof.

If we aren’t taking the time to read the Bible, when people come across our path and the questions fly at us like that crazy bat, will we have God’s word hidden in our hearts like our own personal flashlight~ able to shine HIS answers? Or are we looking at every other light~church, our pastor, our spouse or parents, even social media~for the answers, but never really finding our own?

When we aren’t resting firmly in God’s word, when we don’t know why we believe what we believe, our actions will not be pretty. Let’s teach our children, and ourselves, that we don’t need to be afraid of the unknown, as long as we are resting in Gods words and have the proof hidden away in our hearts.
Psalm 78:6-7, Psalm 119:11,
Psalm 119:105, Psalm 119:41-42, Psalm 119:165, I Peter 3:15,
Psalm 132:12-14, Hebrews 4:9