What to Do with Your Fear

Last night, my daughter can't sleep because of nightmares.  She's terrified.  I ask her to come beside me so we can pray for Jesus to take away all her fears.

"Don't ask Him to take away all my fears," she responds.  "I need some of them." 

"Which ones do you need?" 

"The ones that keep me safe, you know, from bad places and dangerous things," she explains. 

Some fear is good, I realize.

Just that afternoon at the pond, I find myself overcome by fear.  A snake slithers across my garden shoes, and I nearly run back home, leaving my children behind.  It moves into the water, and suddenly, the whole landscape changes.

Snake in the Pond

The beautiful pond turns ominous, deadly, haunted.  My beautiful secret pond has trees with claws and thorns set as traps for my arms and legs. 

I actually can't breathe for a minute. 

The Trees Have Claws

Snakes!  They really are out here.  But then I find my camera, and I notice the way the late afternoon sun covers the whole place.  When I see what the sun reflects, I perceive beauty again.  It's the kind of beauty that always lives alongside danger and fear. 

Put back in context, I realize that a little garden snake and an old tree don't have any power here.  There's something greater in these woods.  The fear is real, but there's always something greater than our fear.  It's the power of God.  It illuminates this path, covers everything, and lets us run with freedom. 

Running with Freedom

Some fear is good.  But when fear consumes and paralyzes us, we have to remember who is greater than our fear. 


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Journal:  What fears do I need to put in the right context today? 

The Irony

I stand in a museum in Gettysburg.  As I enter the room called, "The Gettysburg Address," I feel more solemn than I expect.  A simple room--nothing elaborate or majestic--painted in muted browns displays the words of that historic address.  10 sentences, less than 250 words.  I examine Lincoln's handwriting, noting his style.  How could so few words create a cultural moment so powerful?  How could this conglomeration of verbs, dashes, and words puzzled into a graveyard address change the course of history? 

The document amazes me.  Lincoln uses the address to challenge and inspire us to press on in our own legacy-making, our own freedom-fighting, our own responsible citizenship so those honored dead "shall not have died in vain."  It's a speech so deeply embedded in the past (four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent), but so simultaneously lodged in a future Lincoln could not yet see (that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom).  That double vision is what the study of history so often offers. 

As I turn from the wall displaying the text of the Gettysburg Address, I face an opposing wall of quotations others have made at the time of Lincoln's speech.  It's difficult to see with this cell phone photo, but these quotes refer to the short speech as a bunch of "silly remarks."  One newspaper says that "every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat. . . remarks."  Another comment claims that Lincoln's remarks will "no more be repeated or thought of" in American history.

I take a picture.  I laugh at the irony.  There will always be haters.  There will always be opposition to the good, the noble, and the true.  Perhaps the amount of criticism directly correlates to how good, noble, and true a thing is. 

Living with flair means we move on in our legacy-making and our freedom-fighting despite opposition.  What others claim is "dull and commonplace" just might change a nation's history.