No Fear, No Fences, No Reins

* While reviewing some of my past posts that I never published, I found this which was written while still living at the Flanders house. I never finished writing it, but upon reading it felt it was an accurate description of my current mood.

I woke up this morning around 4 am for my routine bathroom break. I love looking at my clock and realizing I still have a couple of hours to sleep. Except this morning I couldn't fall back asleep as normal, which was quite frustrating. It was too noisy.

4 am seems like an odd time for the house to be noisy, but if you think about it, the quieter things are, the more actual noise is apparent. House noises never used to bother me much. But the older I get, the more fearful I am about monsters under the bed or hiding in the laundry room. Except my monsters usually take the form of scary men.

This morning I heard someone walking around upstairs and in my sleepy state I convinced myself that it had to be a "monster." Who else would be up and about walking around. It should have been very easy for me to hop out of bed, go upstairs and realize that no one was there, or find one of my roommates up for an early morning bathroom break like myself. But instead I just laid there in fear, thankful that my room is in the bottom far corner of the house, convinced that the cops would be on there way before he realized my room even existed. And I prayed that he wouldn't find my roommates either.

It wasn't long before I had worked myself into a frenzy, and each additional noise was evidence that the "monster" was still there. I heard the laundry room open and quickly hid under my covers for that meant he had found his way to the basement.

Even as I write this, I know it sounds very silly. But darkness and a half night's sleep often trump logic. And recent experiences have shown that sometimes your worst fear really is possible.

Fear is a debilitating thing. People hide behind it, use it as an excuse and if they aren't careful, spend their whole life in submission to what they fear most. I used to think I wasn't one of those people. But lately, I've been a lot more content to hide under my covers and hope that the monster doesn't come get me, rather than just getting up and destroying the monster myself. Fear is paralyzing.

I go through cycles of fear, most often around periods of great change in my life. About a year and a half ago, I was about to move, a move that brought nothing but positive things into my life, but prior to I could not see these positive things, I simply saw fear. One of my dear friends came over and amidst our conversation he taught me a great lesson he had learned about fear. Sometimes the adversary uses fear in our life to keep us from things that will bring the greatest good in our lives. It's a tool of discouragement, it keeps us from reaching our potential, it tries to stop us from developing greatness. I was blessed to learn this lesson at that time and it helped me take the leap I so desperately wanted to make.

Now, on the brink of more change, I find the same fear and I struggle to remember the lesson I once thought I had learned. And I can't seem to believe that things will work out, even though experience has proved it to me time and again. I've never been good at closing doors and looking for that window. Once when I was a lot younger, I shared a room with my oldest sister. And then a physical wall was put up and the rooms were alone and separate. I couldn't sleep I was so torn about my new surroundings. 

It's very easy to only see the walls and to qualify them as limiting. The hard part comes in learning to see past the things we fear are holding us back and to not focus on the walls we fear are keeping us from what we want. I made a goal when I turned 26 that I no longer wanted to live my life this way. I would move forward and not be held back. 

No fear, another mantra.