.

First came the clatter of nickels, dimes and quarters spilling onto the floor.

Then came the voice. “Oh, man,” I heard my own 3-year-old little man say as I left my mother-in-law in the kitchen to see what my son had wrought in his bedroom.

As I pushed the door open, it ran into the rocking chair, pulled over from the other side of the room, the better to reach everything that had been placed up high so Frank wouldn’t get it.

And there, balanced on his tiptoes on the arm of the rocking chair, teetering precariously, was Frank himself, grinning at his cleverness.

“No!” I shouted, my heart in my throat, as I swept him off the chair and placed him safely on the floor. “Don’t ever climb up like that!”

Frank’s face crumpled and he burst into loud sobs.

In that instant, my fear for his safety (“You could fall and hurt your head,” I explained later) was transformed, and he was afraid, not of falling, but of me.

His fear didn’t last long—I sat next to him on the floor, and he dove into my arms, seeking comfort from the very person who had frightened him so. As I alternated between soothing his crying and admonishing him about the defects of rocking chairs as climbing equipment, I tried to sort out my own confused feelings.

There was no anger in my heart as I scolded him—at least not towards him. Frank is agile and curious and has always been a climber, and that came as no surprise. The anger turned toward myself, for allowing him to be unsupervised for the 30 seconds or so it took for him to find his way into danger. I know I can’t protect him from all the bumps and bruises the world will deal him, especially if he continues to approach life so boldly, but when it happens, I still feel responsible.

There was plenty of guilt, starting as soon as Frank’s smile disappeared and tears filled his eyes. How could I frighten him so?

Because, I suppose, he frightened me. The harshness of my voice came from high emotion—fear that he would tumble from the chair, before my very eyes, and come up bleeding from the scalp, or with an arm dangling at an odd angle, or, worst of all, not come up at all. My older daughter sometimes asks what scares me; the most honest answer I can give is something bad happening to her or Frank.

Frank’s wails came from a different kind of fear, the fear that results when the world shifts, and the person you rely on for security turns on you. It was too much for him, just for a moment, although we soon recovered our usual roles.

Maybe that’s what the Bible means when it talks about fearing God—the fear that the being that created you and sustains your life could turn away from you because of something you’ve done, even though, Scripture tells us, a parent’s love for a child cannot compare to God’s transcendent love for us.

Our hearts and minds simply can’t comprehend that, or that the Father might allow us to face the full consequences of our actions to help us learn what is right and what is wrong.

But, like a parent’s arms, God’s love is always there, to console us in our sorrows and comfort us in our fears, even those we have brought on ourselves.

I can only hope that Frank’s moment of fear will be enough to keep him from climbing on the arm of the chair again.

Martin is a Catholic New World staff writer.

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