Fear

I haven't posted. At all.

Fear is a cruel task master, and it rules with an iron fist. Fear strangles, withholding hope and joy and peace. When you fear the other shoe...why write at all? If things are going well, surely it is only a matter of time before they don't. Before they blow up in your face. Then you are nothing but a liar because things were going well but now they aren't.

When your child falls down and you start to gain a foothold to helping them up and they fall again...then you are a failure, you think. You weren't helping them at all. Who are you kidding? If I write, they fall apart. If I don't, then maybe they won't. Either way- no one will know. It will all be invisible. The only thing visible is the facade that Facebook allows. "Your family is so perfect" they write. They think. No one is perfect. No one. Definitely not us.

So of this fear...Ann Voskamp writes, "Perhaps the opposite of faith is not doubt. Perhaps the opposite of faith is fear". And there it is. Where is my faith? Where is it? I profess to have it, but the truth is all I've had is fear. My faith cup is empty. It's empty because I haven't filled it. I want to fill it with joy, but I can't because fear is a joy stealer. I want to fill it with hope, let it spill over, let it help others so we are not all alone on this journey- the fear steals hope.

If I am honest I realize that I was ill prepared for what would be required of me as a mother. Surrender. The requisite of surrender, faith. You see, to surrender means the complete abdication of control. To abdicate control, I must lay fear on the altar then turn my back and r u n. Can I do that? To surrender I have no other option but to run to Him. The One who will save me, rescue me, change me.

Then it hits me...this slow change, this shift of universe, this tilt on my axis. What if when we fall down, we are actually falling up? Up. Up to hands stretched out to hold us. Broken hands that hold our broken hearts. What if the worst day of your life, of my life, is actually the best? What if it is that which bruises, hurts, wounds, scars....that actually saves your life, my life, the lives of my children, my family? Your family? What if?

Did it actually take me this long to figure this out. It took a freakishly long time,  but I do see. I see that my fear has caused me to be a turtle in its shell, all the time hiding away from that gol' dang shoe. I thought that surely if I wrote these things that shoe would drop and it would crush me.

For the longest time I was chewed up and swallowed and I sat in the belly of fear waiting for it to digest me. Then it hit me, I can make it STOP. So I stood up and I took the nail-scarred hand that was extended to me. The hand of the One I decided to allow to save me. Instead of fearing the shoe, I put on the shoe. The fear is underneath my feet and I am walking.