When I was little, I was afraid of all kinds of things. I was scared of the dark. I was scared to be left home alone. I was terrified by the Wicked Witch of the West and the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. I was afraid of robbers and murderers. I was sure the Son of Sam serial killer would leave his New York City stomping grounds and find my family in North Jersey and kill us all. And, of course, I was afraid of spiders, probably most of all.

My youngest is seven now, and though he is not remotely afraid of Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies, he is terrified of just about any sound he hears at night when he’s in bed. We have two dogs and two cats, so there are all kinds of sounds during the night. Two older brothers live in the house when they’re not away at college, and of course they are the source of all kinds of sounds too.

This morning before 6 a.m. the little boy burst into my room, convinced that whatever noise he’d heard meant certain doom. “Just because you’re scared,” I said, “doesn’t mean something bad is going to happen.” Sometimes the words that come out of my mouth  are the ones I most need to hear.

Fears so often seem to have the last word. They can appear quite rational, and it’s easy enough to give them power of our choices, our lives, and our future. I’ve done it often. But why?

At 3:30 or 4 most mornings, a car drives through our neighborhood delivering newspapers. Any time my youngest finds himself awake at that hour and notices the car’s rattling muffler, he becomes convinced the car is carrying robbers to our door. It doesn’t matter that I point out the car comes every morning, and that I know it’s delivering newspapers. It doesn’t matter that it’s come countless times before and we’ve never been robbed. It doesn’t matter that we have dogs who bark like lunatics, who would surely send all robbers in flight. Fears are bigger and stronger than rational thoughts. In fact, fears tower over them, seemingly immune to evidence that would contradict them.

There is truth and there is fear, and generally they are not the same. Nevertheless, I so easily believe the worst—that my fears are the certain outcome. As I talk to my youngest about his fears and to my older boys about the things that provoke their anxiety, I am slowly learning that fear is a bit like an evil clown. It’s all a masquerade.

I cannot deny that terrible things happen. Scary things. Sad and dreadful things. But I have also learned that ultimately, down is up. When the worst things do happen, in the end they carry us to a distant shore, the one we didn’t know we needed to reach.