SCARED-y cat? Come to the SON.
I have lived more of my life than I am comfortable admitting to as a scared-y cat.
- Afraid of what others think
- Afraid of how God would treat me if He really knew all I had done
- afraid of making a misstep
- afraid of my own shadow
Fear turns into anxiety when it isn’t kept in check.
Fear is an emotion we are to use healthily in two ways:
- Fear/awe of our Creator
- Temporary fear of danger
We were never meant to let fear, being SCARED, take the driver’s seat of our emotions.
I have lived through a few scares that deepened my fear levels in the short term, while others left me numb without feeling, and still others magnified longer term anxiety.
It has taken two blows to my noggin to help me break free of the two main areas of fear I had.
With my first mild concussion, I was afraid of speaking up for myself and allowed some of my boundaries to be bypassed due to my fear of others. God said no more, and broke me out of that false belief prison.
I now say no, or it will have to wait, without guilt or shame. I have expressed what my needs were in a few recent situations when I normally would have hidden that fear away from the light of day.
I am set free of the fear of pleasing others at negative personal cost to myself, and am learning a new way to express myself when I need to.
I also learned there is nothing healthy about the daily fear of “what if?”
There will be situations that pop up that will cause me to fear.
My fear is not a negative long term emotion if I keep it in check by responding in faith.
I likely might be afraid in the split second before a car appears that it might hit me, its what I do with that fear which reveals my beliefs.
“Jesus, protect me” hands my fear over to Him.
Tightening my body in fear of impact and bracing myself for the worst would amplify the fear if I failed to pray, even in my thoughts.
And if I have been protected, my temporary fear emotion leads me to reach out for my Abba, not drive me away from Him.
If I don’t make it, I don’t want my last thought on earth to be a SCARED, fear-full one. I want it to be a faith-full one.
I have faced a few head on collisions of the emotional sort over the past few years.
God kept my fears in check when I brought everything to Him, and left it safely in His care.
If you too are or used to be characterized as a scared-y cat, I want to reassure you of two promises He tells us time and time again in His Word, and showed us through the life & death of Jesus.
God knows.
All of it.
All about it.
and…
God loves you.
In spite of it,
through it,
always.
If you have a hard time keeping your fear factors in check, please find a professional to help you with them. Sometimes chemicals can get of whack in sudden shock situations, and hinder you from keeping fear in check. Other times, a situation may need to be revisited in prayer so the root of the fear can be destroyed, and you are set free. Some situations require both.
Don’t let fear of what people might think of you reaching out for help stop you from putting God back into first place in your life, and pursuing the freedom, health and life He has waiting for you.
#worldmentalhealthday #fiveminute #freewrites #31days2019
KARLA LEES 