Don’t let this picture fool you. It’s fake.
Just like so many social media posts… including my own.
I think it’s time to be real.
My entire life I’ve deeply struggled with fear. To this day I can remember nightmares I had as a 3 year old. As I got older I’d make my little sister sleep in my room because I was so afraid of being alone. I felt like I was living in a constant state of survival mode, always imagining the worst possible outcomes and trying to protect myself against them. Questions of life and death, the two things I couldn’t understand no matter how hard I tried, always plagued me.
Early last fall, a dear mentor of mine spoke Joshua 1:1-9 over my life, specifically emphasizing “Be strong and courageous, for the Lord is with you wherever you go.” Not long after that I went on a retreat where I felt closer to God than I ever had before. At the end of the retreat I fasted for two days, trying to get my heart to a place that was ready to fully surrender. After dinner when I broke my fast, I was hit with a horrible anxiety attack and stomach issues. Then every day after that I started having multiple anxiety attacks a day along with many other strange symptoms. Because food seemed to trigger a lot of my symptoms, I was afraid to eat most things and lost a ton of weight I didn’t have to lose. I had never looked in the mirror and felt scared before.
When the anxiety would hit, I’d have a hard time breathing and my mind would start racing, sure I was going to suffocate or die in some horrible way. For months I FELT like I was looking death in the face every day, and the fear of it consumed me. On top of all of this my family was going through multiple other intense trials which were opening our eyes to the unimaginable evil being inflicted upon children worldwide, and that even Christian kids were not immune to it. If God let someone else go through such suffering, who’s to say He wouldn’t let me? Or my own kids? Suddenly the world felt like an insanely dangerous place, governed by a God who lets bad things happen to even the most innocent of humans. Between this and the fact that I had been fasting right before all of my anxieties and sickness got triggered, there was a big part of me that was confused and angry with God. I felt I couldn’t fully trust Him or His plans for me.
In the back of my mind I could feel Him saying that He was letting me go through this to purge out the fear I’d held onto for so long, but sometimes I didn’t want to hear it. Other times I would see Him move in a big way on my or my family’s behalf and I’d feel a moment of unwavering faith… only to be dashed to pieces an hour later when new doubts would creep in. But throughout this time the scripture “Be strong and courageous” seemed to follow me everywhere I went – through a song I’d never heard before that God led me to, a gift from a new friend, the name chosen for our church, a perfectly timed teaching. There was no denying that God was trying to get my attention.
By spring time, after working with a functional medicine doctor for months, I was starting to physically feel a lot better. Most of my strange symptoms had gone and the anxiety attacks only tried to resurface if I ate a lot of my trigger foods. But emotionally and spiritually, I felt numb. When I would go to pray no words would come. I knew I was hiding from God and that I was being ridiculous, yet I couldn’t seem to stop.
Before I knew it, summer had arrived and I was due to head off to a messianic teen camp I’d never been to before. I knew no one going and started seriously questioning whether I should back out. After all, I had been struggling spiritually for months, what business did I have mentoring teenagers? But deep down I knew I needed to go, though I wasn’t quite sure why.
This years theme for Camp Yeshua was “Come Alive.” On the second day we were talking about the tree of knowledge and that the penalty for eating of it was death. One of my campers asked why God would make death the penalty (a question I had asked myself many times, thinking that it seemed cruel)… and suddenly I knew the answer, “Because He is so merciful and so loving. If He let us continue to live forever in our sin state, we would never be fully unified with Him the way we were meant to be and ultimately would destroy ourselves. God knew from the beginning that He wasn’t willing to lose us, so He allowed death to come into the picture so that we might be resurrected and brought back to Him fully restored. It wasn’t about punishing us as much as it was saving us.” I sat there for a minute, surprised at the words that had just come out of my mouth. How had I missed this for so long?
The next couple of days continued to chisel away at the walls I had built up to protect myself from everything I feared – including God. On the second to last night of camp I went on a walk alone and found myself standing in front of a large wooden cross on the hillside. I stared at it, trying to picture Jesus hanging there, dying for my sins. I felt the words that had been repeated over and over throughout the week resurface, “Bare your cross and follow me.” My immediate thought was that I was too scared – scared of the pain, suffering, and death that would surely come from my complete surrender. But oh so gently He reminded me, “Have you not been doing everything you can to fill that hole inside yourself, trying to escape the inner pain and suffering you experience every day because you are actually walking around in a spiritual state of death and decay? I’m not asking you to die to yourself and remain dead, but to die so that I can make you truly come alive.”
It hit me like a ton of bricks. I had spent so much of my life terrified of what it would look like to fully give up control. Of the trials and tribulations I would go through like so many of His disciples. But what I wasn’t seeing was that by refusing to let go, I was making my life into the very thing I was scared of – one of pain, suffering, and death – and missing out on true unselfish love, overflowing joy, and peace that surpasses understanding.
“Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” I see this scripture in a whole new way now.
Since coming home from camp, I’ve felt a new inner peace. I’m still struggling with many other things I know God will need to deal with, but when I think about dying that same dread isn’t there anymore. As a Christian I know I have to continue to choose to die daily, and that I have many more lessons to learn and hard choices to make. But I pray that He continuously gives me the strength and courage to keep doing the things He asks me to do even when I’m scared; so that by my obedience I might continue to strip away the lies and see Him for who He really is: The God who takes the enemy’s only weapon against us and refashions it into the ultimate tool of love and mercy.
2 Cor. 10
3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:
4 (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)
5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
6 And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.
Honest Always 