Fear

The Trust Project ♦ April 16, 2020 ♦ Leave a comment

Is it just me, or does it feel like we’ve been immersed in an ocean of fear lately? Ever since the Coronavirus became a real and imminent threat to the American people, we have been seeing the effects of fear all over our country. People hoarding essential supplies and staple food items, people afraid to gas up their vehicles for fear of who touched the pump last, people uncertain if they will lose their homes because they cannot keep up with the mortgage payments due to unemployment. Fear is all around us, doing its best to keep us from moving forward, and in many ways, it is working.

Fear has this incredible power to manipulate, to control. Fear makes us do things that we wouldn’t normally do, and react in ways that are foreign to us or unnatural to our normal state. Fear also has the unique ability to freeze us in our tracks, or “paralyze” us, if you will. It can keep us from making ourselves vulnerable to repair a badly damaged relationship, it can cause us to remain apathetic in a situation which is crying out for justice, it can tell us the lie that remaining in a “safe” place will solve all of our problems. In short, fear keeps us from trusting, and in doing so, holds us back from living a more fulfilling and intentional life.

Fear and trust cannot co-exist. If you are fearing something, you are not trusting; if you are trusting, then fear has no place to go. There are so many times in my life where I have let fear have the upper hand. Where trust has slipped out the back window, and fear has taken the wheel, often with tragic consequences. Early on in my life, I learned about what fear can do first hand.

Growing up in a Catholic home, my parents would sometimes invite our parish priest over for dinner. This was fine of course, until one evening after our priest had left, my parents looked at me and my sisters and said “Father thinks one of you girls may have a vocation.” Now to an average person, this would mean nothing. In fact, the entire word “vocation” is greatly misunderstood in our society. But if you grow up in a good Catholic home, you know that vocation is usually synonymous with being a priest or a religious sister or brother. Innately, I knew he had been referring to me. I was a child who did have a fairly recognizable “spiritual sense” from an early age. I loved Jesus, and I wanted to please Him and learn more about Him. But something about this idea that I had a vocation struck fear into my heart in a way that I did not understand.

As I began moving from childhood to young adulthood, this idea haunted me at every turn. I felt that my life was already planned out for me, my destiny set as to what I was supposed to do. It didn’t matter that I dreamed of having a husband and children someday, the die had already been cast, and I felt I did not have a say in the matter. Consequently, this lie kept me from developing a personal relationship with Our Lord. I was so afraid that if I got closer to God, if I took steps to know Him more personally, and to accept His love, that I would be one step closer to realizing my apparent “fate”. Now all of this may seem childish and silly to you, but as a child it was very real. Fear kept me from knowing Jesus; it kept me from becoming the person he was truly calling me to be. I went to church every Sunday, I kept up with my catechism and my prayers, but I didn’t have a living, active relationship with the Lord.

It wasn’t until I was sixteen, and on a youth retreat, that God finally broke through the walls of fear that I had been putting up for years. There was a young girl on the retreat who openly told everyone “I want to be a nun.” I was totally paralyzed, and immediately thought “That girl is going to be put at a table with me”. Sure enough, she was seated at my table, but much to my surprise and delight, I was able to witness firsthand her true desire to become a nun and to serve the Lord wholeheartedly.

My fear fell away as I realized this very important truth…whatever God was calling me to, it was something that I would feel excited, happy, and joyful about. It was something that would give me complete joy, and fulfill the desires of my heart. I left that retreat feeling as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I could have a personal relationship with Christ, free from the fear of Him asking me to do something with my life that did not coincide with the desires that He had put on my heart.

Fast forward to about three months ago…early Ash Wednesday morning I saw those familiar pink lines on a pregnancy test once more. For those of you who know my story (and for those of you who don’t, I would encourage you to read Our Miscarriage Journey), you understand how receiving this news yet again might strike fear into my heart. Although my husband and I had been praying for another child if that is what the Lord wanted, I didn’t waste any time putting up a wall of protection around my heart out of fear. The loss each of our babies has been devastating in its own right, but losing our twins put a particularly deep wound on my heart.

I immediately started the suggested miscarriage “prevention” protocol that my doctor and I had agreed upon. We told family members and close friends for prayers, and then everything became silent as I realized I was going to have to walk this journey through the first trimester yet again, not knowing what might await me on the other side. The thought of that terrified me. I’ve been struggling with the fact that my Lent was really not what I was hoping it would be, and that God’s presence has seemed so far away. On top of that, I have been dealing with mom guilt for not feeling connected with this baby in a way I have felt connected with my other children.

On Easter Sunday, I began to realize that perhaps one reason why I haven’t felt connected to this baby (besides my fear of losing it) is because we had not yet told our children. Most of my losses have occurred between 11-12 weeks gestation, so my husband and I agreed to not tell our children until I was safely past the 12 week mark, in order to spare our children more grief if something should happen. But it was like the clouds parted on Easter Sunday, and God said “See, I am creating something new. Rejoice in it!” We ended up telling our children at Easter dinner, after which my second daughter’s rather gloomy attitude for the day was changed to pure joy. Because of her joy, I was able to catch a little bit of my own, and I realized that in joy and trust, fear has no place to go. It has no place in our hearts, our minds, or our lives if we want to live in joyful hope. Fear, you truly are a liar.