Out here on the field, we face situations that are dangerous and scary. Not a lot and not all of the time, but they do exist. However, fear is not something that I’ve let control me. I have become an expert at asking myself “is this situation truly scary or am I over reacting?” (Except cockroaches. They will always freak me out, there is no self-evaluation on fear, here.)
However, for the first time on the race and my life, I felt true fear. I feared for my life and I felt fear for the people around me. I can say that in my moment of fear, I turned to God, I sat on the floor and prayed for safety. “Lord, please protect us” was repeated over and over again until I knew we were safe.
At about 2:30a.m I was laying in my bed reading when I heard banging coming from outside our hostel, my mind tried to tell me someone was breaking in, but I kept my mind from going there and went back to reading. At 3a.m a girl started screaming on top of her lungs saying “oh God, someone help me. Please, someone help me. Oh God, help. Get him off of me.” and then everything went silent. I never heard someone address her and ask if she was okay, I didn’t hear anything after she stopped screaming. While she was screaming, I told my room mate to get down and I sat in front of my bedroom door praying “Lord, please protect us”. I didn’t know what happened at the time, but what went through my mind was “this poor girl just got seriously hurt and no one helped her and now her attacker is coming for my squad”. As I sat on the floor I kept hearing someone pace back and forth and I thought it was the attacker.
Shortly after this incident, I received a Facebook message from Kara telling me what actually happened; the girl and her boyfriend were drunk and they got in a fight. The person I heard pacing was squad mates checking on everyone.
Even though I knew I was safe, I had an anxiety attack and was unable to fall back asleep that night. The next day, I was riddled with fear and didn’t want to leave my room. I laid in bed and jumped at every sound. When I did go outside, I wanted to come right back in. Fear had taken over my heart and my love for adventure. The next night, we went to church and we sang a song with the lyrics “Fear has no place with mercy and grace.” I took that lyric to heart and sang it and proclaimed it to the Lord, FEAR HAS NO PLACE.
When we choose to follow God and live his life, that’s when we make the proclamation: FEAR HAS NO PLACE. It’s never easy, but to disciple to the Lord’s people and to go to uncharted places means we have no fear. Because we trust God will lead and protect us, His will, will be done.
