THE OTHER SIDE OF FEAR

“What would you do if money was no issue?” is one of those hypothetical questions that gets on my nerves. Worse yet are the, “What would you do if you woke up with $100,000 in your bank account?” hypotheticals because, why don’t you just drop it in my account? I can show you better than I can tell you. Beyond that, while most of us never get a lump sum of the life-changing money when we need it most, finances aren’t our only problems.

I think the questions we should ask ourselves and each other, instead, are less hypothetical and more thought-provoking. The kind that helps us to see actual possibilities that exist from different perspectives. Let me pose one to you now.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid of anything?

I used to think of spiders, horror films, heights, and such when I was asked what I was afraid of. Except, when I thought about it, I realized that my fear isn’t of spiders in general, just the potential for them to roam in places they don’t belong, like my ears. I’m not afraid of horror films, I just prefer not to have all of my senses toyed with in the direction of unnecessary adrenaline rushes and creepy imagery. And I’m not afraid of heights any more than is rational. Strapped into something secure, or with a beginning and end in sight, I rather enjoy the temporary stomach flutters that it provides. 

If I could explain away all of the usual things people think there are to fear, does that mean that I’m fearless? I can’t say yes, definitively. While I exercise my ability to be rational, some things fall just outside of my natural rationalization abilities. The same is true for most, if not all of us.

Beyond the surface things that are more acceptable to admit to being afraid of are the things that we nurse like a bitter drink that doubles as a momentary reprieve. Things like fear of rejection and abandonment issues. Those fears serve as callouses to protect the wound they stand guard in front of. We’ve so successfully masked the manifestations of those fears that they don’t immediately trace back to the vulnerability of being afraid of feeling unwanted. We project our abandonment issues onto others by finding fault with them and walking away before they can. We do it most when we’ve recognized that they are people we’d love to invite into our lives and allow the freedom to leave their prints all over our hearts.

Anything short of a full declaration of their intentions to come in and stay forever makes us close up. If there’s even a hint of uncertainty coming from their communication we’re ready to close up shop and hit the escape stash like those movies where someone is so used to being on the run that they have go bags prepared with currency from different countries, forged passports, and weapons.

I’ll ask again. What would you do if you weren’t afraid of anything?

I’ve rationalized my own abandonment issues and fear of rejection in the past. It made sense to stand behind the wall and look over it at life happening without me because people have agendas and any engagement with those people and their agendas would mean that those people were acting manipulatively toward me to fulfill that agenda even if it didn’t serve me. I’ve allowed the entire movie to play out with the people from my past enough to bet on patterns, even in different forms. I’ve seen enough to bet that Jessica is just a taller and older version of Raquel. That Bobby just hasn’t had his insecurities triggered by me yet but once he does, he’ll be Carl all over again. Rationalizing self-isolation is pretty easy when you have the scars to reinforce your will to never be wounded again. What happens when you realize that your preemptive pulling away has wounded just as many people as you’ve been hurt by? What happens when you find the villain in your mirror and realize some of the monsters in your closet were just flawed people who you didn’t give yourself a chance to see in the light?

What would I do if I weren’t afraid of anything? I’d let people in beyond the foyer. I’d let them sit on the couch of my life, stay for dinner, watch a movie or two and have conversations that didn’t have anything to do with work and productivity– which has been my safe zone for engaging with people I’m not sure about yet. I’d allow things to play out the way they’re going to rather than mapping out the escape routes for every connection I make. I’d offer real vulnerability rather than the PR twist of pseudo-transparent truths that I offer to test people’s integrity. What about you?

I have another question for us.

What do we do once we recognize what our real fears are and find the words to describe them? 

I’m still working that out but in theory, my process is, to acknowledge the issue, decide who I could be without the issue, allow myself to want that version of myself, pray about it, give it to God and ask for help seeing it through to fruition. I’ve noticed some results so I’m still working on that process. Feel free to borrow it if you’d like.

PRAYER

(this prayer will require that you insert your own unspoken fears in the place where I wrote mine. Make this one super personal —write it down if you need to.)

God, in the deepest corners of my heart, are narratives that have given birth to fears that I don’t really talk about because it feels more acceptable to say that I’m afraid of success than to say that I’m afraid that I’m not as much of a prize as I’ve been led to believe. It feels more neatly packaged to even say that I have abandonment issues than to say that I’m afraid that people will come into my life, collect the best parts of me, try it on and leave to go be, for themselves, the things they like about me. It feels too honest to say that I want to be different enough to be worth staying for and I’m afraid that letting people stay too close to me for too long will allow them to get comfortable in a way that’ll make them feel okay with leaving. I don’t know what to do with those truths because facing them makes the longevity in the things that I want, like friendship, family, and love, feel …impossible. I’ve hidden these truths from myself so successfully that every time I dig them back up, it feels brand new to me again and I act surprised that there are any fears in my heart at all, but I don’t want to pretend anymore. I don’t want to hide them again and repeat this game that I’ve been playing with myself. I want those fears to have real-life solutions— solutions that make me feel like I can conquer them forever. I want to know who I am without those fears. I want to see what I can do without them and I want all the things they’ve hindered —that I’ve allowed them to hinder. I need them uprooted and I need the space they once took up to be filled with something new. I need to be reminded that everything is possible for me because of you. I’m asking that you heal me where I haven’t had the courage to let the light in. I’m also asking that you do the same for the people in my life so we can love each other better. Help me. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

JOURNAL CHALLENGE

Write out the story of your greatest fear. Write what it feels like, and what moments of your life created it and fed it. Write out how it’s hindered the greatest version of yourself and what it will feel like once it’s healed. Write an affirmation that you can say daily (even if it feels difficult to believe at first). Affirm it daily.