Exposed: My Battle with FEAR (part 2)
When I was young, I battled the spirit of fear. I was clueless to it’s hold on me until one very eye-opening phone call with my cousin, Angel. There is one fear she highlighted and that fear overshadow many of my earliest memories. I was afraid that if I did not pray for everyone, If I missed a single person, something bad would happen. If I went one service without remembering all the requests people said or if I forgot to name a person in my own request, they would not get their answer and it would be my fault.
When I was in pre-k, my parents were not comfortable placing me in the local schools, so I lived with my grandparents during the week to go to school in their hometown and came home on the weekends. Every night a bedtime my grandfather would pray for our family and those that were sick or in need of financial help. I went into panic mode. Thinking back I remember my heart racing; sweat falling into my eyes; and hot tears rolling down my cheeks.
With every breath I named every one I knew as fast as I could: Momma, Daddy, MeMe, PaPa, Angel, Anthony, and on and on… Aunt Jill, Aunt Marie, Holly Beth… the church… my school… anyone I could remember. The more I named the more I feared. Finally, I would end with: “Please keep everyone in the world safe. No death. No sickness… if only just for tonight.”
To some that may seem like a sweet innocent prayer, but it was the beginning of a battle I still face today. As I grew up and trust in people fell to the wayside, my fears had room to grow. I lost boldness and the will to stick up for myself. I let people say what they were going to say and believe what they wanted to believe about my circumstance and me in general. The boldness others saw was really a fear of not doing or accomplishing what everyone expected of me.
The most important thing I lost was my true faith in God. No, not completely. I knew and believed God could provide, could heal, could deliver… for others. I just had a hard time believing he would actually do it for me.
I was so blind to everything God was doing. He provided time after time. I have an academic career back to grade school that, under normal circumstance, should not have happened. My peers may have rejected me, but God allowed open doors and gave me favor with administration and my peer’s parents.
Fear blinded me from seeing God’s blessings and fear stopped me from turning all of my hurt and pain over to Him. I kept it inside and never dealt with it.
June 2014, God place my best friend and I in Arizona. He also brought a man of God there to deliver a message I had waited 20 years for… proof that God was there in the middle of it all and he had my life in his hands.
So this might be a slow process, following the Lord’s prompting for me to share my story, but I will. I want someome to realize we serve a personal God that sees us and knows us by name. He has never forsaken us… maybe we left Him.
I’ve always live for God, but there were moments I didn’t trust God completely. Yet, He loved me enough to send people and circumstances into my life to EXPOSE the fear. Once dealt with, I was able to find peace in knowing who holds my world in His hands.
Don't forget to check out Part One of EXPOSED: My Battle with FEAR
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