Wednesday, February 29, 2012

in making changes in my life lately, I've had a few moments of fear. and in those moments, I found myself asking a lot of "what if's".

it's almost a smidge ironic that these changes have occurred so close to me turning 25.

what does this year of my life hold? what if I've made the wrong choice? what if I can't handle the choices I've made? what if I can't do my job? what if I let everyone down? what if everything changes? what if nothing changes?

...and then a wonderful and inspiring e-mail showed up in my inbox...coincidence? well...we know how I feel about that.

this is a part of a story from this site (which will send you e-mails if you want, clearly).

holley talks about her attempt to face a fear: cleaning the dryer vent.

she confesses how she got so flustered when imagining the monster dust bunny that might come out of that vent, she fell right over. here are the wise thoughts that followed:

Because my life is one big analogy, I found myself pondering the dust bunny as I laid in bed that night. While my skinny jeans got covered in fluff, no real harm was done. I just felt like I'd been attacked by a killer rabbit. My reaction didn't match the reality.

It's often the same way with fear. What we imagine is often far worse than what comes to be. And even if it does happen, we discover we're more resilient than we ever knew (and God is more faithful too). But the only way to find that out is to stare fear in the face and let it explode all over of us is needed. Not what we fear but the fear itself--which many times turns out to be worse.

What are you really afraid of?
And if that happened, then what?
And what about after that?

Keep going until you've gone all the way down the pipe of your fear and pulled every little bit back out. Then hold it in your hands and see if you've got a killer rabbit or a dust bunny. You might even find yourself laughing a bit about what you thought was in there.

The secret is not letting all of that fear grow in the dark.

Then stand up, wipe off your skinny jeans, hand it all to God and go out there and change the world...

thanks holley. I needed to hear that.

I'm a worrier and my dad would always try to reason with me growing up. what's the worst that could happen? he'd ask. and honestly, even though sometimes the worst that could happen seemed crummy, it never seemed life-altering. or at least life-ending. at the end of the day, truth was still truth, and all was still well. forever.

health factoid: don't eat polar bear liver, in case you were wanting to try it. apparently it has toxic doses of vitamin a. no good.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes. The topic of fear has come up so much in the past week or so for me. I think God is trying to show me something here... What I have learned is that God is Greater than fear and He is Greater than all unknown circumstances and those dreadful things we think will happen to us. He has the ability to make beauty from ashes, so why should we fear when He's got this?