On fear and dread ... and how they serve us

the monthly letter

Every one of us would say we want to rid our lives of fear. It pollutes our thinking. It derails relationships. It informs our poorest decisions. We say: “fear is our enemy.”

But do I act like that’s true?

Might it also be something I “need”? A staple in my life that would leave a hole if it wasn’t there. Like the frayed square left from our once-plush baby blanket that’s weathered years with us, our fear (and its cousin dread) may also be something we can’t sleep without. An odd kind of emotional comfort, however false it might be.

I despise my fear and my dread. But … these days, I’m noticing how I’ve also needed them.

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It’s nine-thirty in the morning in early December. Remnants of the first snow of the year are still clinging in patches to our wooded path — the parts where the woods are dense and crowd out the sun. Twenty-seven degrees doesn’t keep my littles from wonder; Bo would walk barefoot in this weather if I let him. We’d just received relieving news about a looming health issue (it felt like the first good news in a while), and life felt light. Char’s curls were springy as she ran. Virginia sang something inaudible — some form of a narration. Joy swelled inside of me. Though not unfamiliar, joy also hasn’t been a dear friend … more like a neighbor who feels familiar but might not stay long into the night.

I absorbed this minute — savoring the giggles with my big girls the night before, the brisk winter day full of sun, and the fact that I still have a little person in my life who wants daily (hourly) cuddles.

Until my thoughts were intercepted.

Just like that, my mind went into a zone, I lost track of my kids running ahead of me, and my tea spilled over my gloves and onto my hands as I clumsily navigated the uneven ground beneath my boots.

I was here, reveling in this moment … and then I wasn’t.

Dread crept into my thinking, and before I knew it, I’d forgotten where I was; the current moment was no longer my moment — instead, I was wrapped up in a potential future story.

I won’t burden you with the possibilities that haunt my mind, because I know you have your own. The friend who made that comment made you wonder, since she said it, if she’d walk out on the friendship. The dwindling savings account that this month’s dip in sales might impact. That persistent lump. The child whose behavior is mysteriously erratic, and you consider the future for them. The text you sent in which you bared your heart, and there was no response … your mind imagines how it was received.

We all have them, the fears that lurk in the shadows. I can see Nate’s fears with object clarity — why would he legitimately fear that? And he can see mine, crystal clear — babe, that’s derailing your thinking. But perhaps we can’t fully engage in the process of releasing our own because they serve us — well.

You see, friends, joy is much riskier than walking out the outcomes of your fears.

Joy is unruly and unpredictable. It takes us to heights from which we might fall (or so we tell ourselves). It is wild — untamed by the world, given by God. It is vulnerable, exposing us to the elements.

Absorbing a singular moment with joy introduces the little girl and little boy hopefulness — which may then be dashed or destroyed.

So, as an instinctive safety against this unpredictability, the “what ifs” flood our moments of joy. They crowd our ability to be present in a moment. They overwhelm our thinking. They swamp us. We grab that last quarter square of our security blanket and wrap it around our exposed self, and …

… yet again … fear has served its purpose:

I don’t have to take the risk of joy.

“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11).

And before that:

“I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure” (Psalm 16:8-9).

David’s words tell me: for me to know (to taste, to experience, to live) that wild-full joy, my flesh must first “dwell secure.”

If I’m honest, many days, it does not.

Just like during my walk.

Many days look like brushes with the truest gifts of God in my life … against a heart that is more familiar with the false security of fear (that patch of a blanket that’s still left from my childhood) than it is with His joy.

Joy means …

I am trusting,

rested,

leaning,

hopeful.

Joy means I am, in point of fact, secure.

Though I like to believe that at 47 I am fully secure in who I am, I often toggle between the woman who has enough history to prove that God is always good and the little girl who is still sucking her thumb, thinking the shadows are full of ghosts.

Friends, our fear and its cousin dread are serving us — though we may not even see it. We hate them, but we’ve needed them … because we’re terribly unfamiliar with the kind of security God wants to give us (and the path it takes to get there).

As I plod through mid-December, I’m acutely aware that my ability to craft false security (by way of fear) is a more significant threat to my joy this season than any single circumstance.

Perhaps the healing starts with merely noticing. Observing. Sitting in the fear (gulp: yes, I said that) and exploring it, rather than pretending it doesn’t take up the space that it does inside of us — in our thinking and our relating to God.

In the week ahead, there will be five-year-old Christmas ballet recitals featuring sparkling tutus and bright-eyed little girls. There will be Christmas parties where you stay long into the night, laughing with old friends. Your postal worker will bring a surprise gift from a friend, and your neighbor: fresh-baked bread on the night you were heating popcorn in the microwave. You will open the Word to just the right passage from Him. Your advent devotional will reach into your heart and whisper His truth.

This week ahead and the ones after are full of potential. There are joy-bringing bursts of His strong arms (His security) scooping you up ahead.

And a worse threat than your circumstances is that threadbare square of a blanket FEAR that you’ve held onto for a lifetime. Though it’s held a seemingly significant place in protecting you from the “danger” of joy … maybe it doesn’t have to do so forever.

Until next month,

Sara