Hello Fear

This weekend I got to spend a precious amount of time with an old college friend. He invited me to his church's youth camp and asked me to share my testimony, in light of my biggest fear. 

I have never given my fears much thought, and given that I have shared my story on numerous occasions, in front of numerous people, I didn't prepare as I would do a sermon.

We certainly live in a culture where fears are watered down to spiders, the dark, ghosts and all sorts of superficial things. But we rarely talk about what really scares the hell out of us (I hope hell don't scare you). We rarely talk about the things in our hearts that give us a fright, or the the amount of headspace we give to certain things keeping us up at night.

I had a speaking slot the Saturday evening, but as I sat in the sessions the Friday and Saturday morning, I began to realize that I have no idea of what scares me, and that's a big problem. We have to identify the things we fear most so that we can deliberately push ourselves into situations where we can face those fears. I doubt that there's another way around it.

Fear numbs. I know. It has numbed me more than once. The moment i look at a situation and the outcome is not as I expected, fear seeps in with its deadly poison. It numbs all of me, sometimes even my physical body. But because I didn't know WHAT scares me, i couldn't grab the thing by the throat and flush it down the drain.

I fear rejection. I fear dying without accomplishing anything. I fear 'man'. i often fear myself. I used to fear love and being loved, now I fear losing that.

I read Donald Miller over the weekend, saying, "Sometimes, the best thing you can do is just show up, don't run, stand there with your hands in your pockets and live IN the fear".

I want to live in the fear. But to resist fear, I HAVE to embrace honesty, at all levels, even if it hurts. I have to be honest with myself; the people in my life, and the stranger on the road. I often sound so in control of my life when people ask me what am I doing and where am I going, but truth be told I have NO idea where my life is going. Often times our fears are masked with confidence, and sometimes the lack thereof. I can sound so confident about my life, that no one will smell the fear its driven by.

Kirk Franklin sings this beautiful song called "Hello fear" in which he says, "Never again will I love you; My heart refuses to be your home; No longer your prisoner, Today I remember; Apart from you is where I belong".

As from today, I resolve to live in the fear. I choose to get hurt, fail, or be rejected, but I shall not fear again.