The cockroach under the cup

The cockroach under the cup

In the hotel we were staying at in Vietnam last month, my team was split up into three rooms. One room dealt with mice, one room was visited by bed bugs, and my room…yep, cockroaches. I thought the cockroaches back in the states were big, but the ones in Vietnam are an entirely different breed.

One night, my roommate Charla saw a cockroach crawling under my bed so she took a cup and trapped it. We decided that as long as it stayed under the cup, we were fine. Why deal with it when we could just keep it at bay until it died on its own? (We actually googled this and it can live for up to a week…bummer)

The next day, our teammate from another room gained up the courage to pick up the cup and kill it for us. But when she picked up the cup THE COCKROACH WASN’T THERE!

Later, Charla was laying in bed and a cockroach (probably the fugitive from under the cup) started crawling UP HER ARM! We called in the exterminator (our teammate Brie) to come kill it, and she took care of it once and for all! 

A while after this happened, I was at a coffee shop with Charla chatting about life and what’s going on in my head. I was trying to come up with a good analogy for what I was talking about and it dawned on me. Cockroaches. 

The past few months I have struggled a lot with inner-peace. I have almost always remembered having this feeling inside my heart that everything was okay (Enneagram 9s understand me). Even if things around me were falling apart and blowing up, I related to the hymn that says, “it is well with my soul.” However, while I’ve been on the race I have realized that I have created a fake-peace. I ignore problems, avoid necessary confrontation, and just hope the things I need to deal with will fade away.

It’s just like the cockroach. When problems scurry into my life and crawl around under my bed, I trap them under a cup and hope they just die on their own. I hate cockroaches and I hate conflict. With it trapped under the cup and pushed out of my brain, I can find some peace in knowing that it won’t bother me.

This is fake-peace. The cockroach – the conflict – is still there and still real. At some point, I will have to deal with it. And, of course, there’s always the possibility that it escapes and comes crawling up my arm, forcing me to deal with it! (not ideal…)

I have learned on the race that you have to face conflict and fear and confrontation. You have to pick up the cup and squash the cockroach. Picking up the cup is scary and causes a little anxiety, but once the critter is dead and dealt with…real peace.

You know those creepy, crawly feelings that find their way under your bed? I think we have made a habit out of trapping them under cups instead of dealing with them. If you’ve checked under the bed recently…quite a few cups have found their way under your bed. I have avoided and shut down negative feelings for so long it’s like second-nature to me. Undoing that is…tricky. I still haven’t quite figured out the best way to squash the metaphorical cockroaches in my life, but I know I have to start by picking up the cup. 

In the spirit of thanksgiving, I am trying to be thankful in the hard times. So, I am choosing to be thankful for the gross little critters in my room because they gave me a great analogy (which I love a good analogy) and blog post!

Happy belated Thanksgiving!! (sorry, I wrote this like two weeks ago hahaha) 

Love y’all,

Em

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