Welcome to a New Year. Here is a wish for all that it be filled with Christ, courage, confidence, and clarity!
Like it or not every person, regardless of age, gender, or position has to confront fear in his or her life. We may face it in different arenas, as in relationships, work, sports, health, or sex. We may fear things in nature, in others, or in ourselves, but no one is immune to it. There are those who have reached the pinnacle of success who are still haunted by the fear of failure, and those comfortable making decisions affecting the lives of thousands that still fear their parents’ disapproval.
Fear is everywhere, and there is both good and bad news in this. The bad news is that we can’t avoid it, or we do so at our peril.
Understand this: What we don’t face rules us, most often unconsciously. A life avoiding fear is a life ruled by fear. It will be a life restricted to the known, with self-discovery and creativity as its casualties. It will be focused on safety and security, and passion will atrophy. Conversely, in facing our fear directly, we break its hold on our lives. By doing what we’re afraid to do, we develop confidence in ourselves. We learn that we can “handle it.” We put ourselves in positions to learn new things, to discover talents or resources we didn’t know we had, to seek help, perhaps meeting people and making friends along the way. In short, as we enter new territory our world expands, and as it does, our fear becomes a smaller part of it.
Learning About Our Fears In Nature
(taken from Circles of Air Circles of Stone)
Charlie was a computer programmer in his early forties. He loved children, although he had none. He was bored in his job, which kept him in a basement office with no windows, and he was “going through the motions” in a lifeless marriage with a conservative and fearful wife. He felt trapped and stuck.
Charlie entered the Vermont woods with his hopes, fears, and a flashlight. His major fear was of noises in the dark, but “as long as I have my flashlight nearby, I’ll be okay,” he assured himself.
As twilight approached, Charlie gathered his intentions and his courage, and made ready to face the darkness, the noises in the night. He worried that, if he should fall asleep and be awakened, he might be unable to find his comforting light, and so, with nylon rope and safety pin, he attached it to his shirtsleeve. His “problem” solved, he relaxed and drifted off to sleep.
Hours later, he opened his eyes in the blackness. Something had startled him, jarred him loose from the webbing of sleep. What was it? The noise -- where had it come from? Confused and disoriented, he struggled to attain consciousness, to bring his attention out of his dreams and into his body. As he did so, he became aware of a presence, cold and foreign, his fear erupting as he jerked himself upright, screaming, “There’s something on my arm!” It was, of course, his flashlight.
The story of Charlie’s flashlight illustrates how fear works in our lives. We develop strategies not to feel it, to avoid it, to make it go away. Like Charlie, with rope and safety pin, we become attached to whatever seems to lessen its presence(our jobs, our children, our parents, hobbies, anything not to face our fear or our problems). Charlie was clinging to a boring job and a lifeless marriage, situations that brought him little pleasure. By holding onto them he hoped to avoid his deepest fears: fear of rejection if he faced the job market at forty, fear of living alone and feelings of inadequacy at the thought of entering the singles social scene. Charlie came to realize that, like his flashlight, clinging to these situations not only didn’t relieve his fear, it actually increased fear’s power in his life.
Charlie had been holding onto his job, his marriage, and his flashlight the way a young child clings to a parent. The young child, who lives in each of us, hopes to avoid the frightening things in the world. He or she tries to do this by holding onto Mommy or Daddy (or spouses, money, children, position, etc.) or by magically making those things go away (drinking, television, workaholism, etc.). Most of our “security objects” do not, in fact, nurture us. Often they are deadening or outright destructive. But the real damage is not just in the activities or objects of our dependence. By clinging, avoiding, or medicating our fears, we structure our lives around a childlike feeling of helplessness, thereby reinforcing it. We subconsciously affirm our weakness, our inability to “handle it,” encouraging and enabling fear to spread until worry and anxiety pervades every decision and action.
Scott Peck, in the best-selling book The Road Less Traveled, defines metal illness as “the avoidance of legitimate suffering.” Whenever we avoid our difficult feelings -- fear, grief, anger, loss, pain, etc., when we refuse to fully experience them, we make ourselves ill, we create disease. The problem then is not the feelings, the problem is not the fear; it is our urge to deny it and protect ourselves from it. Staying in bed will protect us from the fear of the bogeyman in the closet, but if we truly want to lessen our fear, we have to open the door. Fear must be confronted and faced to be healed.
What are you holding onto with a "deathgrip" in order to attempt to forget you do have fears? What kind of problems do you face that you refuse to face up to for fear of failure or having to stand all alone? What have you pinned your so called security on in order to avoid facing your fears? These questions must be answered to live a whole life! Don't be afraid to look under the bed and see if the bogeyman is there. Don't be afraid to look at bad relationships with toxic people that keep you down with a renewed resolve to become wholly independent from things that hurt you.
Face your fears with determination to let God control your destiny! If you call yourself a Christian and all you have to face fear is religion you are bankrupt of faith! You must develop a real daily, living, relationship with Christ and exercise real faith! Christian religion without Jesus at the head is dead religion! He is a prayer away...
See you next blog,
Ted
