I have struggled with fear for as long as I can remember, but I am here to encourage you; it doesn’t have to rule your life.
In 2008 my husband and another couple spent a month visiting various projects and mission possibilities in East Africa while we considered moving to there to serve.
While in Uganda, we spent an afternoon taking a hike with our host Michael, a missionary and water engineer. We were right on the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, in a village called Bunibungiyo.
Michael decided to take us to see his favorite waterfall, we had to see it! How could we pass this up?And so off we went. In order to get to the falls we needed to first hike up through a coffee plantation (translation: super steep slope, lots of spiders and biting ants).
Then we skirted the side of the mountain on a trail about 12-36” wide with trees and rocks that required us to climb out and around (fear of falling!) Finally we reached the falls (beautiful, but who cares!) and I didn’t care because all I could think about was, "How am I going to make it back!!" I mean look at my face, that's not joy!
When did finally stumble back in, Michael's wife Karen asked, "Where did you go? Not to the falls, Michael that’s dangerous!" And, I felt relieved, because Karen confirmed for me that there had been real danger. This was not just me being overly anxious and height phobic.
This has been a key for me, discernment between the real and the imagined; true danger from the acceptable risk of being alive. Often I have struggled to see if I was facing a real problem or just my over active imagination. It has taken me years to realize it requires a good support structure to help sort that out if you either ignore real danger or retreat in fear from situations that present a pretty reasonable level of risk. Because life is risky, no doubt about it. The mortality rate for people is just about 100% (unless you account for Elijah and Enoch)This makes for a delicate interplay between real risk and the illusion of safety that make managing fear tricky business.
How do we handle fear, what is fear and "So what, now what?" More on that in our next post.