The Leap With Fear

“Perfect love cast out all fear.”             I John 4:18

Fear is being afraid of the unknown, of what might happen.  Fear holds us back and keeps us from experiencing life and the adventures that are waiting just around the corner.

Grief enhances our fear.  When our loved one dies, especially if our loved one was our main support and main relationship, we experience fear in our loneliness.  “Who will I turn to?”  “Who will be there for me?”  “Who can I talk to?”  “Who can I trust?”  Fear can isolate at a time we really need people around us.

I watched a recent Hallmark movie where one of the main characters was afraid of heights.  She was told by the leading man, “Fear may not go away.  You may have to do it afraid.”  Fear tends to keep us from
experiencing the adventures of life.  Fear holds us back and whispers in our ear “It will be bad.”  Fear takes us to the worst case scenario – everything that could go wrong.  The reality is that it probably won’t but fear assures us something will go wrong or others will not approve.

Fear keeps us on the merry-go-round of life doing the same thing over and over again even when it is
not satisfying and we may even dread it.  But it is familiar and we stay and become complacent, bored, discontent but afraid to change.

Fear tells us that bad things will just keep happening to us and life will never be good.  Fear keeps us in our grief and sadness because we don’t know what life will be like without our loved one.  We are afraid to risk viewing life with a different lens because we have never done that before.  Fear tells us this is how life will always be from now on.

Fear is a liar.  Anxiety and worry feed our fear.  We are afraid of the future and worry about all that could happen.  The future seems too scary so we spend our time worrying about all that could happen and never live fully in the present.

Fear takes away also the assurance that we are loved and that even God loves us and is with us.  Perfect love – God’s love – takes away all fear, but only when we trust God.  Perfect love is God loving us each moment and being aware of His presence even in the difficult and painful moments of our lives.

As we walk the journey of grief and begin to contemplate a future, fear grips us as we look into this unknown life.  The voices of fear in our head tell us it will be too difficult and the loneliness is too overwhelming.  Fear holds on to the past because the future is just too risky and unknown.  I agree it is a risk and it is unknown, but
it is what we have.  Sometimes we just have to take a leap even when we are afraid knowing God is with us and is already in the future.

I have been taking leaps with fear throughout my life and my grief.  I accept that I will not know where I will always land, but I do know that God is already there when I land.  I may be afraid but I still take the leap.