For those of you who do not know me, which is probably all of you, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Janna, I have been married to my husband for 13 years this past April! Together we have two girls, who are 5 & 3, and I am a follower of Christ and deeply in love with my Jesus. I was born and raised in a Christian home; to which I am extremely thankful for my story; it’s a story that is so few and far between these days and I’m thankful. My husband compares my upbringing to that of the Cleavers from the Leave it to Beaver show….for those of you who do not even know what that show is….well I’m showing my age, and you can look it up here. Up until March 20, 2015, my life has been pretty easy. Sure there have been things where I’ve made bad choices and messed up and all those things, but nothing really major has happened in my life, until last March.
March 20, 2015 is a day that I will never forget. It was the day I got the call from my brother that my father had passed away. You see, he had been fighting the battle of MSA for 4 years prior to the call. We knew what was imminent. We also knew there wasn’t a cure for this disease, and we knew and trusted that if God wanted my Dad home, he would take him at the right time. But you know, no matter how much you think you are prepared for something like that, you aren’t. The call was just as heartbreaking as it would have been had my dad not had a terminal illness. The hardest part for me was that I live in Virginia and my parents are in Colorado, so I had booked a plane ticket to go visit my Dad because we knew his time was short so I wanted to get out to see him again. My flight was on a Tuesday, and he passed away four days before my flight was scheduled, on a Friday. I was devastated. “I was coming to see him, I was coming to see him,” was all that I could get out between my cries and grief. Losing a loved one is something I have never experience up until this point I life. I had no context for grief or sadness like this, until that day.
What I didn’t expect to happen in the days and weeks to follow was, again, something I didn’t have much of a context for in my life; fear. Through this process of grief, fear grabbed ahold ofme. I have never grieved the loss of someone close to me so I didn’t know what to expect when it came to the grieving process, and I certainly didn’t know that fear could or would be a part of it. For the next few months I found myself fearing death. Fearing the unknown…fearing the questions that, “Ok if I’m a follower of Christ and I KNOW there is a God, and my Dad knew Him…so that means he is WITH God…..so what is he doing!?!? Like RIGHT NOW what is he doing??” The questions rolled around in my head over and over creating a snowball effect. I know that the Bible describes heaven as this amazing place, but my human mind could not wrap my head around it. I wrestled through that and God in all his loving kindness revealed, yet again, to me that he is trustworthy. If he can be trusted in this life, which I 100% do trust Him, then why can’t he be trusted in death too? There was no answer other than, “You can be Lord.”
So the fear of death subsided some, but manifested itself in other areas. You name it, I feared it. From being robbed, jumped, shot to death, to being in a terrorist attack, attack on my kids, my husband, friends, fear of large gatherings of people, looking for the exits, what do if this, what to do if that….on and on went my mind as it was crippled by fear. Which is understandable too because this stuff is happening more and more frequently & feels like it's getting closer and closer to me. So that in itself makes it hard to not allow fear to settle in & take up residence in my mind.
I want to define the word fear so we know exactly what this word means as we take time today to break it down. Fear is defined in Merriam-Webster as:
I love the last bullet point, to be afraid and worried, because yes that is exactly what I was. I was afraid of so many things, and I was worried about all the other things. You guys, I was staying in my house avoiding going to things in fear that an attack would happen when I was there! When I say I was crippled by fear, that is exactly what I was; crippled.
Maybe for you, where you currently sit, this isn’t something you have faced. This isn’t something that you have wrestled through;to you I want to say--thank God for that! That is a blessing and one I hope you never do have to wrestle through.
My guess though, is that many of you have been. Many of you know exactly what I’m talking about when I describe what it’s like being crippled by fear. When it has its claws so deep in you, you don’t know what is true and what isn’t anymore. When you are avoiding things because you are afraid of….any number of things from, something bad happening, or to even just being around a large amount of people.
Maybe for you it’s the not the fear of something bad happening but it’s the fear of being vulnerable. It’s the fear of letting someone else in to your deepest thoughts. Fear that if another human really knew what went on in your mind, they would judge you, or have you committed.
Maybe it’s the fear of being hurt by another person? Fear of trusting another person; you’ve been hurt by someone before you and refuse to allow anyone the space to hurt you again?
Maybe it’s the fear of feeling like you don’t have a purpose, not being used by God like you wished you would be? Maybe it is the fear that God would ask you to do something that is going to require a sacrifice on your part?
Whatever fear you face today, I want to invite you on a journey as we discover what God has to say about fear, and how to navigate life through your fears.
So join us in the next post as we take a look at Fear Not: You have a choice.
Much love!
xo
No comments:
Post a Comment