dealing with fear | Stray Thoughts

Hello friends,

I was sorry to miss Friday’s Fave Five yesterday. I had a procedure Thursday morning to remove a squamous papilloma from my tongue. I was supposed to come home later that day, but when they took me off the anesthesia, my heart went into afib, around 150 beats per minute. They spent several hours trying different medications to get me back to a regular rate and rhythm. My heart rate slowed, but still wasn’t regular. They finally decided to admit me. but it took another few hours. So I was in recovery most of the day. Then Friday morning they did a cardioversion. We finally got home around 8:30 last night.

I told one friend that, of all the what-if scenarios my mind kept coming up with, this wasn’t one of them! But some of the other concerns I had didn’t come up. I’m on soft foods for the next few days and hopefully will be enjoying rest in my own bed. For those who knew about the procedure, thanks so much for your prayers! Those and your care have meant so much to me.

I always start my Laudable Linkage post early in the week with whatever post I first find that I want to share and add to it until Saturday. So here’s what I collected this week:

Harvest in Fearful Times. “When we hear murmurings of bad things on the horizon, when the men in pickup trucks start getting us all worked up, when the doomsday preppers get our ear, we must pray with all our hearts that our first thoughts are for the millions of souls in this world who don’t know Jesus, whose best days are right now, with only dread and doom ahead. We should be filled with a sense of urgency for our neighbors to experience true salvation so they have hope for a peace and perfection in eternity with Jesus.”

Knowing God as Father Fights Fear. “God is our heavenly father and in His Word He describes Himself as a father and His love as like that of a mother. In the New Testament, the familiar term “Daddy” or “Papa” is even used. These parental words are used over 250 times in the Bible.”

It All Comes Down to This. “Pine shadows greeted me creekside, and I settled onto a rock with my brand new Bible. It was one made for teenagers like me, in my language, pages of helpful words to introduce the timeless ones. I flipped through it, feeling like I’d come home. Near the front I discovered a reading plan, and I caught my breath. What if I read the whole thing? What would I discover? I had no way of knowing that simple curiosity would launch me on a lifetime habit.”

Feasting. “Hospitality is not really my gifting. Setting a table and planning a meal overwhelms me. That said, my introverted heart is filled with pleasure in the space of time after dinner where everyone lingers at the table. Bellies are full, good drinks are flowing and a peace settles. I long to linger because that is the after. The preparation is done, we’ve hopefully all been satisfied and now we can rest. We sit after the feast together. This is a small picture of what the Lord’s table should be for us.”

The Great Pumpkin and the True Meaning of Christmas. “When it is serving us correctly, fiction serves as a scaffolding for truth. Imagine scaffolding for a moment: it provides a framework for people to get higher. It is not the building itself. Compared to the strength of the building, it’s a temporary structure. But it serves an important purpose.”

Made to Make: Two Books About Creativity in the Midst of Motherhood. I have not read the books mentioned, but I liked what this post had to say about trying to find time for creativity while parenting. I especially like the part about creativity not just being “artsy.” “Motherhood and creativity sometimes seem like paradoxical pursuits. I think any mother with a creative hobby–writing, crocheting, baking, painting–knows that doing their art takes time, and motherhood is a stage of life where schedules are so unfriendly toward the time that creativity takes. And yet, being a mom has given me an urgency to pursue writing–my creative outlet–in a way I have not experienced before.”

What Will You Do with That Degree? “But what is an education for? Do we know what we are trying to achieve? Too often, our assumptions rest on deeper philosophical commitments, each with their own vision of human flourishing.”

There is no greater mercy that I know of on earth than good health except it be sickness; and that has often been a greater mercy to me than health. It is a good thing to be without a trouble; but it is a better thing to have a trouble, and know how to get grace enough to bear it. C. H. Spurgeon

I was sure a headhunter watched me while I slept.

As a child, I woke up one night to see a rounded shape beside my pillow on the top bunk. I was convinced a headhunter was standing by my bed, looking at me. I’m not sure why—headhunters weren’t known to roam southern Texas in the mid-1960s. Perhaps I had recently read a book or watched a program that included headhunters.

I decided to handle the situation by shutting my eyes tight. Perhaps if he thought I was asleep, he would go away. But if I tried to get past him, I was sure to be no match for him.

Somehow I did go to sleep. When I woke up the next morning in the full light of day, I saw the rounded shape by my head was my teddy bear.

I felt foolish, but relieved.

Since then, I’ve wrestled with many unreasonable fears.

What if:

No one chooses me for their team?
I get lost?
I stand up in front of my speech class and my mind goes blank?
My husband is late from work and might have had an accident?
Something might be wrong with my unborn child?
My husband loses his job?
One of us gets cancer?
He dies before I do?

. . . and more. I have an uncanny knack to imagine all the ways in which something could go wrong.

There’s some chance that any of these things could happen. But there’s no sense worrying about what might happen. If what we’re worried about doesn’t occur, we’ve wasted all that time and energy and angst. And if it does come to pass, we’ve doubled our pain by adding worry to it beforehand.

But what if what we fear is a very real possibility?

Almost thirty years ago, I woke up one morning with my left hand feeling funny. Thinking I had just slept on it wrong, I went about my morning routine. But that numbish feeling grew in area and intensity. Within three hours, my whole left arm, both legs, and my lower torso were numb. I couldn’t walk on my own.

The eventual diagnosis was transverse myelitis, an autoimmune response to a virus that attacks the spine. The body attacks the myelin sheath around the nerves of the spine as well as the virus.

I’ve told that story in more detail elsewhere. Thank God, I was able to walk again after a lot of physical therapy and prayer. Most of the feeling came back to my limbs, but my left hand still feels like I have a glove on, and my lower legs don’t have full feeling. My biggest after-effect has been trouble with balance.

Like many illnesses, healing from TM is not a straight, steady upward path. Sometimes the numbness and tingling were worse than others. In addition, sometimes I felt odd sensations in other parts of my body–a buzzing feeling, or involuntary movement, or a feeling like something was touching me when nothing was.

When symptoms escalated, especially that “slept on it wrong” feeling anywhere, I’d panic that I was having another TM attack. TM doesn’t often occur twice, but it can. If it does, the doctors begin to suspect multiple sclerosis rather than TM. The “multiple” in MS means these kinds of attacks could occur throughout life.

I wondered how people who had heart disease lived, knowing they could have another heart attack at any time. Or how people who had recovered from cancer coped, knowing their cancer could return. These issues felt like living with a medical sword of Damocles hanging over people’s heads.

I had to remind myself that, if God allowed another episode of TM, or if I was diagnosed with MS, He would be with me and help me through it just as He did the first time.

A passage I pondered with amazement in my early Christian life was Psalm 46:2-3: “Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.”

I’ve been in a couple of very minor earthquakes, and even those mild tremors were quite disconcerting. I can hardly fathom something of this magnitude. Mountains falling into the sea? That sounds like good reason to be scared.

But this passage says, even in that scenario, “Therefore we will not fear. . . ” What’s the “therefore” that causes the writer not to fear?

Verse 1: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”

You know what comes later in this psalm?

Verses 10-11: “‘Be still, and know that I am God.’ I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth! The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”

Whatever our fears, real or imagined, unlikely or plausible, God is with us. He is our refuge, strength, and help. In Isaiah 41:10, He promises: “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

In Running Scared: Fear, Worry, and the God of Rest, Edward T. Welch says:

The sheer number of times He speaks to your fears says that He cares much more than you know…The way He repeats Himself suggests that He understands how intractable fears and anxieties can be. He knows that a simple word will not banish our fears.

Search Scripture and find that our fears are not trivial to God. ‘Do not be afraid’ are not the words of a flesh-and-blood friend, a mere human like yourself. They are not the words of a fellow passenger on a sinking ship, who had no experience in shipwrecks, can’t swim, and has no plan. These words are more like those of a captain who says, ‘Don’t be afraid. I know what to do.’ When the right person speaks these words you might be comforted.

Another verse that comforted me during my TM recovery was Lamentations 3:32-33: “Though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men.” He’s not capricious. Whatever He allows is for a purpose.

Trusting God’s presence and purpose in whatever He allows, trusting His ability to sustain and assist us through any situation, trusting His character and love for us, will all help us deal with any fear, real or imagined.