“For God has not given
us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” 1
Timothy 1:7
Four
thirty-six years now, fear has been a strong underlying current in my
life. It kept me up at night as a kid,
it transformed movies into nightmares, it kept me at home when I wanted to go
out, it nearly shut down my college search, it paralyzed my choice of
professions. It made me less than in
everything I did. I am afraid of
tornadoes. Spiders. Losing someone I love dearly. Failing.
Financial disaster. Car
accidents. Seeing my children
suffer. Embarrassment. Job losses. Being wrong. Lightning.
Carbon Monoxide. Fire. I could keep going. You get the point.
Perhaps
the greatest stronghold of fear in my life is my faith. I am constantly afraid of being let
down. I’m afraid that if I step out in
faith, God will yank the net out from underneath me. I hear God saying that he loves me, but I’m
afraid I’m wrong.
On my
way home from work today, a huge black cat bounded across the road in front of me,
and fear fought up from my chest into my throat. The same thing happened shortly after my dad
was diagnosed with cancer, and we all know how that turned out. I wouldn’t call myself superstitious; my
rational mind says I am being ridiculous, that the world of a believer is not
ruled by old wives’ tales, but still.
Black cat + car = fear. Today, as
fear fought upward, the words in 1 Timothy came to mind. God did
not give us a spirit of fear. So
that spirit of fear I’m feeling? It’s
not from God. I fought that spirit of
fear today and I prayed. Prayed for God
to show me He is greater than a superstition.
For His protection. For his
power.
Then I
got to thinking about the fears that are keeping me up at night. First, there’s the whole how are we going to pay our bills if I quit my job? fear.
That one seems pretty legitimate, but surely if God is leading me this
way, He has a plan, right? But what if He doesn’t? It surely hasn’t shown up yet. There’s
the fear that I’ll immediately regret my decision if I quit. Or that I’ll regret it in twenty years. There’s the fear that James will not be happy
if I’m not working full time. Or that he
won’t be able to respect the work that I do.
(Totally rational, that one, because it is rooted in experience.) Or
that we’ll have a major financial need and it will cripple us forever. I am truly legitimately worried that I will
end up destitute, talking about how I had it all and I made the wrong decision.
Fear
tells me that the moment I resign my job, James will lose his. And what then? We’ve always had my job to rely on, even if
it killed me. Fear tells me to hold onto
the bird in hand; it is logical, I’ve worked a long time to be where I am, and
why would I give it up? Fear says James
will find someone younger, skinnier, and with more energy and then I’ll be the
fool who trusted him. Fear tells me
we’ll never take another vacation, and I’ll never get to buy clothes that fit,
that the dangerous railing on the back porch will never get fixed, and that the
rotting siding will just keep rotting. We need my contribution to the finances to
keep this old boat floating. The bottom
line is this: I believe God has called me to step away from my profession and
focus on building into our family and a writing career. But I’m afraid I’m wrong. The only thing binding me to my old job is
fear. Not desire. Not passion.
Not conviction. Fear. And God did not give us a spirit of fear.
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