In the past few months, I have been experiencing something that takes many different forms. It is part of the human condition. Fear. However, at its core–it is a weapon of the enemy to make us feel small, powerless, and disrupt our heavenly Father’s plans for us. But it can also be transformed by being hushed, tamed, and it can empower us. If we acknowledge our fear, it can be used to ignite within us a desire to defy it, to say yes to the unknown. Because essentially that is a lot of what fear is, not knowing. For example, when kids fear the dark it is a lack of knowing what’s out there. I think in acknowledging our fears aloud, or to others…we decide not to add secrecy or loneliness to those fears. Things are much less frightening, when we see them, say them, know them. So I am going to use this post to share my current fears about my World Race journey with you. My biggest fear is being vulnerable. To share too much, or to do the wrong thing and look foolish. I also want my faith to be relentless and unconditional–but it isn’t always that way. My own brain gets in the way, invaded with thoughts that I won’t be able to raise the money or that I have to take care of myself. Which feeds into my fear of being little, not having enough to bring to the table to offer those people with no one or nothing in this world. Another fear that I think about is becoming apathetic. To see something heart breaking, or filthy, or unjust, and not allow it to capture my gaze and keep it, to not capture my heart, to just look on numbly immune to others pain. There is no doubt I will see things like this on the World Race. And while I can’t allow my heart to fester and become stuck in such sadness, pain demands to be felt even if it’s for others.The last major fear that I have in going on the World Race is something called fear of missing out. The idea that I will be leaving for almost a year and I will leave my life as I know it behind, and the things I leave will go on without me, that I will miss things. Like Christmas with my family, or my sisters birthday, my friends who will all go on to get jobs or go to grad school. It’s funny what most people keep asking me, or what I read in their eyes when I tell them I am going. They ask if I am afraid for my safety, and the truth is, not really. Maybe I’m young and reckless, I mean it has gone through my mind. But the much higher concerns on my heart have to do with my heart. And after seeing my fears on display and written out, they are feeble in comparison to the power of Christ within me. The cure to each fear is Christ. Christ is in the cure to my fear of vulnerability, where He tells me that my heart is beautiful and I need to share it, where he tells me to look foolish means to learn and to have enough humility to laugh it off or move on. Christ is in the cure to my occasional doubt and meager faith when it says in 2 Timothy 2:13 “If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, for He cannot deny who He is”. He is faithful even when I am not. Christ is in the cure to my enoughness, where He tells me He made me perfectly for His purposes and I will be provided for in every challenge and every question. Christ is the cure to my fear of apathy, I am always protected, wherein He will allow me to feel things enough to continue to be passionate, but not so much as I am overtaken with grief or discouragement. He is the cure for my fear of missing out, when He tells me His plans and purposes are huge and I am about to embark on one of the biggest and most stretching adventures of my life. Well there it is. “For the Spirit has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of POWER, LOVE, and SELF-DISCIPLINE.” -2 Timothy 1:7 The fears are still there, but they get quieter everyday.
