AN END TO FEAR
Sometimes the biggest fear we have in life actually happens. Sometimes it’s a slow burn. Sometimes it occurs in a single moment.
There is a vast array of irrational scenarios that fear can paint in your mind during those sleepless nights or internal rabbit-hole episodes. I find it interesting how our minds can certainly fixate and worry through every single “what if”, yet knowing every “what if” never truly prepares us when calamity actually hits. You think it will, but it’s simply a counterfeit to the fullness of security in Christ. I’m grateful God knows that about us broken humans. He knows our flesh’s natural tendencies toward fear, and He knows what those very fears can propel. That is why the antidote to fear is faith — For His glory, but also for our sake; And I consider that the kindness of God.
Faith, though often demanded in the most unstable times, is true stability. It is true freedom.
I’m coming to realize that maybe my biggest fear needed to happen, so I could finally be free from many years’ worth of its hidden entanglements. Though it was finely marked by the feeling of my stomach being slowly grated into shreds, or the inability to stop my body from shaking, or the unnerving vulnerability of being in foreign territory… Or by the new, throbbing reality that people I once considered deep, would-lay-down-their-lives-for-you family will likely never acknowledge my existence again.
A grief-riddled surrender will come and it will go, and when you throw yourself unto the promises of God in that process, freedom reigns.
It’s the comparable (yet incomparable) imagery between an aggressive yanking of a window curtain that abruptly exposes sunlight to a pair of eyes that just woke up… and a gentle sunrise that progressively fills a room with more and more light on a slow Saturday morning. Both accomplish the same thing — Being brought into light. In one sense, it’s a painfully swift uncovering that you fiercely resist in the beginning. In another sense, it’s a tender lifting of a veil that leads you to the freedom that was meant for you all along.
I walk in the light now, no longer controlled by the one thing I used to be terrified of. All while learning that God will do exactly what it takes for you to be free. That is His love for you.
The Lord is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the defense of my life;
Whom shall I dread?
When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh,
My adversaries and my enemies, they stumbled and fell.
Though a host encamp against me,
My heart will not fear;
Though war arise against me,
In spite of this I shall be confident.
Psalm 27:1-3