Forsaking Fear

Hi, my name is Bekah, and I struggle with fear.

My fear used to be utterly paralyzing. Remember when I told you about my fear of the rapture? After that, I moved on to fears of many other things...and many of them are things I'm still not wild about to this day, but that gripping, heart-stopping terror has subsided.

The desert helped with that. It was my then-worst-fear come true. To be chosen and promptly rejected. And I lived through it. Other things don't seem so bad now.

Usually.

In a couple of weeks, the lovely Angie Smith is planning to be on Mid-Morning to talk about her new book, What Women Fear. So this week, I started reading the book, and I knew...I knew...reading that book would bring to the surface some of those remaining fear-wounds that so rarely sting anymore. I prepared myself. It'll get worse before it gets better, I said to myself. It'll hurt but you need to hurt so you can keep healing.

So I took a deep breath, plunged in, and read.

Check out these words: It is so easy to fear we have ruined something beautiful. So easy for us to believe that we held the keys to what was supposed to be and now we are destined to live among the ashes that remain...We are powerless in changing it, but paralyzed by the sense that we have tainted the greatest canvas of our lives...You weren't made to walk through life with the stack of missed opportunities pressing you into the ground. (...from What Women Fear, pp. 24-25)

I underlined those words and pondered them in my my journal. That was me. That still IS me, some days. The days when I think Bekah if you'd just been more, he would have stayed and you would have had the promise. Now you get ashes.

No.

Because I serve a God who trades beauty for ashes.

To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. - Isaiah 61:3, NLT

I went to bed after reading that chapter and I didn't just cry myself to sleep. I sobbed myself to sleep.

Good sobbing. 1000-gifts-worthy cleansing sobs. I am not destined to live in the ashes that remain from a broken relationship. I am destined to live in the beauty of whatever lies ahead.

If only I can let go of the fear it doesn't exist. It's not an overnight fix. But I'm thankful it's healing come to life in this girl's heart.