Fear vs. Trust

I was journaling last week when I had a sudden moment of keen awareness of a trend in my life. I tend to adjust my expectations to avoid disappointment. In my hobbies, goals, and even interpersonal relationships, I see this common theme of setting low expectations to avoid potential undesired outcomes. 

I adjust my health coaching goals to avoid failure, or disappointment. I adjust my expectations in my friendships to avoid feeling let down, or rejected. And I can adjust myself and my behavior to avoid stepping outside of God's will. 

And that last one miiight sound a teensy bit wise, right? Sure, it's good to want to stay inside God's will! But sitting on my really-blue-but-has-a-brown-cover couch during the wee hours of last Friday's morning, it was as though I suddenly saw the clear underlying issue in all of these behavior patterns. 

F E A R. 

I adjust my goals out of fear of failure. I engage in friendship while simultaneously operating out of a fear of rejection. And I am constantly analyzing myself & whether I'm on the "right" path because I'm afraid of going the wrong way. 

FEAR. FEAR. FEAR. 

I tend to think of fear as this overpowering emotion that leaves you paralyzed and trembling in a corner. I thought it was easily identifiable, and didn't think it was something I struggled with. 

It turns out, I was wrong.

I don't think fear in and of itself is bad, just like I don't think any emotion in and of itself is bad. But I do think that when an emotion becomes the driving and controlling force behind our behavior, it's dangerous.  

My fear became louder than my God. 

But luckily, my God is not afraid to get loud for His children to hear Him. ;) 

Sitting on that couch, I felt God ask me a hopefully life-changing question. 

If I operated out of trust, I would trust that my disappointments and failures would be used for God's glory. If I operated out of trust, I would trust that God's acceptance means far more than any rejection ever could. If I operated out of trust, I would trust that if I go the wrong way (when I go the wrong way?), God WILL redirect me. 

It would literally alter every. single. area of my life. 

Trusting God would enable me to trust myself, knowing that He is bigger than me and fully capable of leading me. Trusting God would enable me to trust others, knowing that I have nothing to lose with all my worth in Christ, and simply everything to gain from community & relationships. 

Trusting God would make it impossible to operate out of fear. I truly believe that it's that simple. 

Living it out? I'll be the first to admit, "not so much." But I'm on a quest to get there! To find this life that operates out of trust instead of fear. This life that doesn't hide from fear, but also is not controlled by it. This life that really, really lives out of the knowledge that God is trustworthy, and oh so good. 

And that's where I'm at on this Monday. What's God got you chewing on?

XO,

Amy

What I want to tell you

I'm sitting here in bed at 10:42PM listening to the rain, and trying to figure out how to kick off this blog post. And since I really want to say 'why hello there!' but I've already typed and erased that a few times cause it just doesn't sound right, I figured I may as well get on with it. 

I'm really glad I don't have an English teacher grading these blog posts. Pretty sure she would cringe at that introduction. 

There's just so much that I want to say right now. I want to tell you about the wonderful, fun, relaxing Bachelorette weekend I had in Palm Springs. 

I want to gush about the fact that I've known this girl since second grade, and it's crazy to see how the Lord has worked in each of our lives, and in our friendship. It's equally crazy that in exactly two months from yesterday, I'll be standing beside her as she gets married. Like, woah. 

And just for kicks:

I want to tell you that I'm reading this book: 

I want to tell you how reading Dave Lomas' vulnerable account of his own identity crisis has helped me identify my own. I want to tell you all about my Giant Papillary Conjunctivitis diagnosis, which is basically a super professional way of saying my eyes hate contacts. I would probably make a lot of jokes about it, and say a lot of positive things about how there is so much purpose in this & God is using it for His good and His glory. 

And, to be fair, both of those things are entirely true. God's using my broken eyeballs to do a lot of good in my heart, and it is pretty funny to say that I have broken eyeballs. 

But I also want to tell you that it's hard. I want to be authentic and say that it's shown me how much I was relying on feeling confident in my physical appearance. Sometimes you don't realize you're using something as a crutch until God so graciously takes away the crutch. 

Actually, it's not exactly when He takes it away that you realize it; it's what happens after. It's when you find yourself ugly crying, or grieving like you lost a limb, or feeling the crippling sensation of fear, hoplessness and doubt. All over whatever simple thing was removed in the first place, for me: contacts. 

 I also want to tell you that it's okay to do those things. It's okay to ugly cry; it's okay to grieve when you feel like you don't have a reason to; and it's okay to acknowledge that you feel crippled from fear, hopelessness, or doubt. God doesn't ask us to hide our emotions, and He certainly would never tell us they're invalid. They are valid to Him, because He understands them. He understands them more than we do. 

He doesn't want us to hide from our emotions, He wants us to walk through them with Him. Because guess what: there's a light at the end of the tunnel. A light that we might never have found had we not gone through the crutch-removal surgery in the first place. 

For me, I see that light. I see the fact that my heart and mind and vision are being restored to see beauty the way He sees it. I see that I'm learning to truly find confidence in the Lord above all other things. I see that I'm learning to throw up my hands, and surrender to Him what every part of my flesh wants to control via wikipedia/google/wedMD. I see that I'm learning to trust that He has good plans for me. 

And now that I've turned what I thought would be a tip-of-the-iceberg post into a full blown heres-my-life post, it's your turn. 

What's new with you?

Fight or flight?

I was a senior in high school when I got stung by a bee during cheer PE. We were practicing our jumps when it happened, right on my shoulder blade. I ran up to our coach to let him know what happened, and sat out for a bit before sucking it up and joining the crew again. 

Maybe an hour or so later, we were practicing our stunts. As I was standing there, helping to hold our flyer in the air, a bee landed on my chest. I immediately noticed it, and without even thinking, my instincts kicked in. 

I ran. 

Yes, I ran away from our stunt group. Leaving the other two girls to hopefully catch our flyer as she toppled towards the ground {they did}. 

It took me a minute or so before I even registered what had just happened, and that's when my instincts took over again. This time, with profusely apologizing. 

***

It was 2011 and I had been working at my very first full time job for about a month, or so. It was time to figure out how to incorporate working out into this new schedule of mine, since the whole sit at a desk for 8 hours and then spend the rest of the night on the couch routine wasn't gonna do any good for anyone. 

I decided to start running during my lunch breaks. And guys, this was pre-Amy likes running days. Our office was a mile and a half from the beach, and I think the first day I probably got half way before turning around to run (slash walk) back. 

Each day I got farther and farther. One day, I'm gonna make it to that beach, I told myself. 

And one day, I nearly did. I turned around to make the run back with new confidence in my stride. And feeling on top of the world, I nearly missed that my foot was about to land on a giant snake making his way across the trail in front of me. 

My foot landed hard on the ground, just as his head whipped to look me in the eye. 

No, this is not the same snake. Really think I stopped to take a pic?

I bolted in the opposite direction. 

And that's when I signed up for a gym membership. 

***

They say when crisis hits, you are either conditioned to fight, or flight. I think it's pretty clear which of those two categories I fall in. I'd like to think I'm a fighter, I really would. But all signs point to the fact that I am most definitely a flee-er. 

It's no wonder I came to like running {insert corny laugh here}.

Lately, life has been pretty overwhelming. Mostly, in good ways. Overall, I'd say I've been overwhelmed with some pretty huge blessings. 

But the key word is overwhelmed (in case you didn't catch on by the fact that I've used that word 3 times in the last 4 sentences). A lot of change was thrown at me in a very short amount of time, and for the first few days, I rolled with the punches. 

I smiled, rejoiced over the exciting things, and brought the uncertainties to the foot of the cross. I praised God for His goodness, and prayed over the decisions to be made. 

I was walking through all of these unexpected changes as you would imagine a Christian would.

That is, until I wasn't. 

Until I found myself crunched up in the corner of my room, on the phone with my mentor, crying ugly tears. The kind that are usually always paired with hyperventilating. 

Until I found myself saying into the phone "I'm overwhelmed. I don't want to deal with this. I want to run away."

And every fiber of my insides wants that. Every instinct inside of me is telling me to run, and fast. 

Because that's how I handle stress, and uncertainty, and fear. I run. I run fast. And I'm good at it. 

But that's not how God wants me to live, is it? 

He wants to turn this flee-er into a fighter. And it's my prayer that I can put all of those instincts inside of me aside, to listen to the only one that truly matters. To listen to the one that tells me

Be still. Listen. And trust. 

Fear

Today's prompt was a tricky one: what makes you afraid? 

I couldn't decide, do I go the serious route? Or do I stick with spiders, needles, and the moms on Dance Moms?

Don't worry ladies, I decided to go the serious route. 

So what makes me afraid? 

I gave this a lot of thought. My initial responses were rejection and never getting married. But, I realized that those are things that I used to be afraid of. God has been so kind to help me find peace in Him and His plan, and that peace has really helped me get over those fears. 

So hmm.. rejection, never getting married,

guess I'm not afraid of anything!

Hooray!!

...

Did you believe me for even a minute? 

Ha, didn't think so. 

I had to really think about it, what am I honestly afraid of? And I realized that my biggest fear is losing a loved one. Specifically, someone in my family. 

I've never lost anyone close to me before, but I have watched people very close to me go through that. Of course it gives me peace to trust in God and His plan, but that doesn't make the thought of losing someone I love any less scary. 

So Mom, I know you read my bog. Eat your veggies, k? I love you a whole lot.