All-Consuming Fear -- The Surprising Truth

     As I write this, I am waiting for events to unfold within my family.  I'm not in charge of these events, and I am concerned.  A few years ago, I would have to say that I would have been terrified.  Life is happening, a bad outcome is possible, and I can do nothing to stop it except pray.

    But I am not terrified.  Deep within my soul I know that God is in control, and so I wait for him to do what he's going to do.  Whatever he does, it's going to be exactly what is needed.

    Some people might call this fatalism.  It isn't.  It's trust:  deep-down, all-encompassing, totally dependent trust.  This trust did not come overnight; it came through a surge down through fear, out through to the other side.  It came through living and breathing God's mercy, and the result is that I know that God's ways are not my ways, but they're the best ways.

    I've spoken about fear--ways to stop it from destroying your life. But there are times in our lives when our fear seems very valid and threatens to overwhelm us for good reason. When your loved one is in the hospital and nothing is helping, that can be terrifying.  When you are facing layoffs and cutbacks and are not prepared, you can become frozen with fear.  When you are faced with something that you have been concerned about all your life, it can come over you like a tidal wave.

    I've faced many things in my life:  abuse, death of a child, both parents, and a spouse, job loss, and most lately solitude.  All of these things at some point horrified me.  But all of them no longer do so.  Why?  Because I have walked through them.  I wish I could say that I walked through them fearlessly, but I did not.  However, I have learned secrets that might possibly allow you to walk through them more easily than I did.

    First of all, we are talking about enormous things here.  These are not fears that can easily be put aside.  Nobody wants to think of loved ones dying. Nobody wants to imagine themselves alone.  But some things can and should be worked through before the fear comes.  For example, loss.  When my father died, he was 81.  I knew that the death was coming.  I had time to prepare.  Yes, I still grieved and it was still hard, but it wasn't as overwhelming as were the other losses.  If you and your spouse are blessed with good health, wonderful!  You should still go through end-of-life planning together.  The fact that you did will make the ending easier. Everything is easier if you have walked through it before it happens.

     Next, don't collapse in on yourself.  That's what I did and it is absolutely useless.  If someone offers help, TAKE IT.  If you know that you need it and nobody is offering, MAKE YOURSELF ASK.  A real problem with friends of the grieving is that they don't know what to do.

    I could go on in this fashion, but I want to continue with the major idea.  We are overwhelmed by fear because we don't trust God to know and complete his plan.  When we see ourselves in the process, we imagine that it will be like this forever, or we think that it will never get better, or we are afraid that we will never recover.  In other words, we trust God's word.  "I know the plans I have for you--plans for GOOD and not for EVIL, plans to give you a HOPE and a PURPOSE.

    I hear you thinking--surely you don't mean that God PLANNED these things?  Surely you don't believe that God allows evil--or worse, brings it himself!  I'll tell you what I believe.  I believe that we don't know the end from the beginning.  Only God does that.  We don't see the path in its entirety.  Only God does that.  Sometimes we can get a glimmer, and sometimes that glimmer can put things into perspective.

Example:
    My son was born at 24 weeks.  Because we were part of the Kaiser HMO, we were forced to transfer him to a Kaiser hospital as soon as he was considered "stable".  He died after 11 days of struggling, and he broke our hearts.  Our family shattered.  That was our reality.  But there was another part of our reality that we didn't know--only God knew.  The clock was ticking on my husband.  Up to the moment my son died, God was distant and unimportant to him.  But when Tommy died, Val spoke of needing to get right with God so that he could see his son again.  That was real and necessary, and I believe he took it seriously.  

    When Tommy died, I wondered over and over again why God didn't save him.  My question was answered in 1993, when he took my husband.  I had a 6-month-old baby and 3 older kids.  There was no doubt that had Tommy survived, he would have been severely mentally disabled.  I simply could not have managed.

    I know--these examples raise every bit as many questions as they answer.  But at some point you have to stop blasting heaven's doors with "Why" and begin to realize that He knows what is best and you don't.

    The other thing I've learned about fear is that the very thing you're afraid of is that very thing that you need the most.  More on that next time.