The failure of Fear

I grew up in a culture of fear.  Not the fear that was being pushed down my throat from a fiery pulpit, or the fear of the bullies that shared the same halls with me in early middle school.  NOT the fear of the anger that I held just below the surface for most of my life.  And definitely not a fear of dying.

The culture of fear that I knew was my truth.  I feared anyone know the truth.  Because I was scared of who I was.  I was ashamed of what I was.  I was fearful.

That Fear drove me deep inside and it continued to eat away at me for the majority of my youth.  When I was a young adult, I found an outlet for my fear.  The symptom - a drug that destroyed almost as much as the abuse and the pain inside did.

At 26 I lost my fear.  Or at least I found a mask to wear to hide the pain and a weapon to attack anyone who got to close to my truth.  And I took this mask and wore it with pride, and I took the weapon, a retaliatory sword that slashed and cut the hearts and the hands of those who probably would’ve helped me.   I became a slave to my past, to a drink, to anything that would numb the pain inside.

Fear was winning.

And then it stopped.

In a quiet, simple moment I was given a calm and a ‘peace that passeth all understanding’ (and quite honestly scared the shit out of me)*.  Because in the world inside my head that had been so full of noise, commotion, battles being won and lost in single strokes of my mind, that silence was deafening.

And for once, Fear lost.

Fear can only hold us as long as we feed it.  It can only exist when we give it something to hold onto, when we allow it to purchase in a place inside us and not let go.  Fear does not abide with the truth.

“You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.”

Psalm 91:5-6

I can’t tell you how to find that place of calm.  I still don’t have it all the time.  My mind still races, my head gets ahead of myself and I find myself running around in circles so many times.  What I can say is that I don’t fear like I have in the past.

Nor do I fear my past.  Oh, I have a lot of things that I need to make amends for, but I don’t fear them.  I pray about them. And I pray for the people that I’ve hurt and the people that have hurt me.  But I won’t fear.

I’m pretty gosh darn stubborn, and I know that God wouldn’t let me go when I wanted to let go of myself. So Fear failed.

Yes, Fear tries to rise its head every once in a while.  It finds the little-bitty cracks that I’ve left open for attack.  But God gave me something much bigger.  Life.  I was shown how to live life in this moment. Nothing more.  I am blessed with friends that I trust, a mentor who puts up with my craziness and three beautiful kids that I adore - whether they realize it or not.

I still miss Annie.  Every day.  I still love her.

I don’t fear the future.  I know there is one.  Fear used to tell me that I had nothing to give, that I was worthless, that I wasn’t meant to be here.

But you know what, Fear loses if we choose life. 

Fear dies a little more every moment we chose to live.

So, “Fear not…”

The Burtle 

Fear = noun

fear = verb

* November 19, 2020

A.W.