Perpetually ruining that wonderful time of evening when the baby is sleeping and a cold cocktail rests in my hand is the thought, “I wonder what happens if a stray bullet flies through the nursery window?”

My heart races, chest gets heavy. A midnight creak must be a burglar or serial killer downstairs who specializes in families. Or maybe it’s mouse, whose droppings are full of neurotoxic baby viruses. Is that black mold in the basement or just a brown recluse spider waiting to kill my family???

And so as I set the mousetraps and security alarms and imagine how much bulletproof windows would cost, I consider just how life became so terrifying.

Maybe a lot of the terror comes from blessings. Because I have so much, I worry I will lose it. I grasp at the gifts I’ve been given, worrying so much about losing them that I don’t enjoy them very much.

My favorite book of the bible (and maybe of all time) is the book of Job. Job is the holiest and most neurotic man in all the land (see why I like him?). Job is so holy, in fact, that he offers sacrifices to God for sins his children might commit.

Well, all of Job’s fears come true. His kids are killed. His land destroyed. His health ruined. To make it even worse, his wife abandons him and his shitbag friends arrive and tell him that it’s all his fault.

After all of this, Job wants justice. He demands a trial, one that will exonerate him and hold both God and his friends guilty.

The miracle of the Job story is that God shows up in a whirlwind, a tornado. That Midwestern icon of chaos, death, and disaster.

God sternly tells Job to listen, and then begins to talk like a mad zookeeper: “Can you hunt the prey for the lion, or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, when they crouch in their dens, or lie in wait in their covert? Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones cry to God, and wander about for lack of food?”

God continues:

“Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and spreads its wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes its nest on high? It lives on the rock and makes its home in the fastness of the rocky crag. From there it spies the prey; its eyes see it from far away. Its young ones suck up blood; and where the slain are, there it is.”

God, the lover of  blood sucking things. God, the creator of the wild, undomesticated universe, brimming with broken bones, black holes, and blood sucking beauty.

And it is beautiful. Annoyingly beautiful. Ineluctably beautiful.

After a long night of worry, the sun still rises. The birds still sing. The stars still shine. Flowers bloom.

When the chaos subsides, Job reunites with his wife and they have more children. No longer the neurotic helicopter parent, Job names them with wild abandon, celebrating their beauty: Little Dove, Sweet Spice, Horn of Beauty.

Job, like God, is now a lover of wild beauty all around him. He’s no longer focused on keeping and maintaining all he has, he’s lost it all so he’s free to love it all.

Maybe that’s the beauty of all the blood sucking things: mosquitoes, bats, baby hawks. They remind me that the universe we live in is wholly undomesticated. Like the God of the whirlwind, they are wild, beautiful and free.

And if I’d stop worrying for half a second, maybe I could be too.