Faith Bigger than Fear

Fear has been a common theme in my life. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of not being good enough, fear of forgetting something, fear of being lost, fear of being stuck, fear of spiders, fear of spicy foods, fear of embarrassing myself, etc. My parents used to say when I was really little I wasn't afraid of anything. I would just walk off with people I thought were nice or I would dance in front of a crowd, or walk right into a pool before I knew how to swim. No fear, at least until I hurt someone...and until someone hurt me.

Then I learned to listen to fear to keep myself from hurting anyone else and to keep myself from being hurt. In the right context fear is very good and is a gift from God to us. Scripture even calls us to fear the Lord, not in a hide under your covers kind of fear but a deep deep awe of his magnificence and majesty and glory. Something inside us to tell us what is good for us and what is bad for us. Such as it is bad for us to turn from the Lord to do our own thing. Or to stick our finger on something that is too hot. It is meant for our good, and sometimes it keeps us from stepping into what God wants for our lives.

A little over a year ago I was just exiting a very painful season of my life. It was probably the sixth such season in just a few years and it seemed that the majority of my adult experience was consumed by pain. I remember holding onto faith during the difficult times, speaking truth to my fear and growing in some wonderful ways and when the season came to an end I grew numb. It took so much effort to walk through that difficult time, and now looking back I realize I had tried too hard to control my fear. I tried using my faith like a leash, tightly tied around fear's neck trying to keep it from running off or getting too far ahead. Wasn't that what I was told to do, to not fear?

In my psychology training I came across this concept about secrets, that if you try to resist thinking about a secret it will often keep popping into your head. The more we stuff it the more we struggle and the more it begins to consume us. The best advice is confession or asking yourself what this thing is trying to tell you. When I struggled with a severe bout of insomnia a few years ago I learned that the thoughts running through my head were there to help me remember the things I needed to get done. The only problem was they were getting in the way of my sleep. So I learned to catch the thoughts and tell each one "I know you're important and I need to deal with you, but this is sleepy time. I will put you in a drawer until sleepy time is over and then I will deal with you." I put my worries to bed every night until I somehow grew out of the insomnia.

In my own me and Jesus garden, I have a lake in there that is surrounded by rocks of various shapes and sizes, and on each rock is written a different fear of mine. Once in a while Jesus and I will go over each and every fear and He will tell me to hold each rock in my hand and speak the Father's love over each fear. Once in a while He will tell me to put the rock/fear in a drawer on the cross because we need to talk about this fear. And when the fear disappears or no longer hinders my life I'll toss it into the lake.

Acknowledging the fear, recognizing it, naming it and giving it a place to dwell until the fear is no longer needed has been a profoundly helpful technique for me. I often think of my faith as a blanket and I envision the thing I'm afraid of is like a baby that is crying out for comfort. It needs faith wrapped around it to feel safe and secure so it can sleep. Even if the fear is unreal or is irrational it still needs to be acknowledged and named. But instead of scolding it, the fear needs to be loved and listened to. Faith is the anchor in the storm, the fence that keep the cows in, the spigot on our faucet of emotions. Faith is that which gives us courage to move beyond and see deeper than our fear will let us. "Courage is not the absence of fear, but the knowledge that there's something greater than fear" ~ Princess Diaries.

The courage to believe that even though the bank account is empty that God will provide. That you are not alone in your loneliness; that the friend will still stay after saying some hard but loving things to them. That God is with us; that the tools in our hands and the gifts we have can be used to do amazingly powerful things. That nothing is too small for God to use. That no act of kindness, no matter how small, will go unrecognized. That faith as small as a mustard seed will move mountains.

That fear, when comforted by faith, really will settle down, grow silent and small and take it's rightful place.