Fearless?

As I lay in bed with my sweet Lillian, rubbing her head to get her to sleep, I had time for reflection. I thought about today, and Isabelle showing her profession of faith, then my mind jumped to Lillian again and my fears that nestle deep down, that I bury, about her well being. It got me to thinking about my childhood and what a fearful child I was. While I took no thought to grabbing hold of a grapevine and swinging out over a ravine...I vividly remember being frightened when I heard a car squealling down our rural country road. I was raised in a mobile home in the woods and when someone went tearing down the road at night, you heard it. Even though our home was up on a hill and our driveway was a hill, my mind's eye always imagined some crazy person flying up the driveway and into our house (in the car). Particularly when there was a fight in the family I worried someone would retailiate against us. I also recall being afraid to sleep on the top bunk bc I thought someone could actually scale the home and climb in a teeny tiny window just to hurt me. The storms...oh the storms, just terrified me. I remember many a times watching the winds cause these mammoth trees to seemingly bow down to the ground. When my Dad built rooms onto the mobile home for my sister and me, I specifically recall telling him I didn't want a window. I think he laughed.

Several times, during winter Mom and I were frightened out of bed by the fire alarm and we all (except Dad) ran over to Grandma's house til he figured out what was wrong. You don't hang out in a single wide mobile home when fire is perhaps in the walls...

Some of my fears were rational, such as my parents' splitting up, some of them weren't...such as
'Jaws' coming up through the bath tub drain to eat me. (I might mention that my mother used to let the drain suction onto my butt and make me think the sink was trying to suck me down...) ahem...anyway, I think my fears followed me all through my life. I was always desperate to have a boyfriend, and being from small town IN and being slightly bigger than most girls in my class, that was not going to happen. I felt so insecure about myself and was so enamored when a boy did show me attention, that I totally let go of myself at a very young age. It was nuts. To think at the age of 15 I would expect to marry someone that I was dating then. I also remember crying when in my junior year a boy that I was dating broke up with me. I thought my life was over...seriously.

I used to be so afraid of death or worry that my Mom would die. She was very sick when we were quite small (and actually continues to battle health issues).

Early on as a married couple I was fearful to stay home alone while Matt worked late into the nights. It was nuts. Nuts, nuts nuts. That fear passed as my Mother and father in law prayed over me one day for the Lord to take my fear away. And He did.

As an adult, my fears are so much bigger but it took me years to learn to give them to God. While I know nothing is certain, I know that because of God, I will be able to get through it. I was afraid when my baby was struggling to survive, but she still ives. I was afraid when I brought her home, but I'm still her best caregiver. I was afraid when the flood threatened to take away everything we had, but it didn't. I was afraid when I had to find a new place to live, but God provided a home. I was afraid when I thought a tornado was going to whisk us away and I couldn't get my baby disconnected from her machines in time, but a tree just landed on the house and we were safe. Not to say there aren't many obstacles to still overcome in light of such circumstances, and there have been harsh realities, but God is taking us through them all. I have faith that is bigger than my fear and I only hope that I can impart this to my children so they will not carry with them a spirit of fear.