Fear, the one mistake you can make.
Monsters that leap out and grab you every time faith promises.
“I have bad news.” The voice on the other end of the line crackles. Fear surges through my veins and digs its talons into my chest. I try to brace myself for what might follow, but to no avail. Nothing calms me. Adrenalin reaches an all time high. I’m light-headed.
The call was from my son who is working in the Philippines. He had been suffering from unrelenting headaches and had seen a neurologist. Waiting for the doctor’s report was torturous. I had imagined the worst possible scenarios.
“I have sinusitis and shingles.” He explained.
I hated having someone so dear to me in so much pain! I wanted to wrap my arms around him but couldn’t.
As he went on to explain the doctor’s concern for his eye, my stomach knotted into a wad of fear. I wept myself to sleep that night and awoke the next day sobbing. I found it difficult to work. Anxiety riddled my seemingly endless days and sleepless nights. Worry wore me down until I feared I would drive off the road on the way home from work, or worse; hit the car in front of me due to my mental distraction.
Fear gripped me like a hawk its prey.
I tried to wrestle free. Waves of panic rolled through my body, and I could not quell the dread. Then in the midst of my delirium, the email came…unexpected:
Hello
I’m featuring your blog post “The Distractors” today at The High Calling.
Each month, I review our 1800 bloggers and thousands of posts to find the gems.
I picked 10 this month and yours was one of them!
Feel free to point your readers to www.thehighcalling.org around noon MST today.
David Rupert
Newsletter Editor
The High Calling
www.RedLetterBelievers.com
rupzip@gmail.com
Wow, I thought. When I read David’s post, Around the Network: Don’t Get Stuck, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. I reread “The Distractors” and instantly knew God had sent my words back to me as a reminder. The message soothed my tortured mind, and I could feel a flutter of faith inside:
“Only those steady of heart, soul, and mind will stay on the road God sets before them. Look to the white line of what He last spoke to you and follow it with every fiber of your being. Distractors will surely come and with them the impulse to veer off course.”
How ironic faith is. At those times when you least expect grace to appear, and need it to the most, God finds an amazing way to send it your way.
Droplets of grace rained down upon me during those dreadful days and nights. Like this excerpt from a prayer my online friend, Anastasia, sent through a Facebook email: “We walk in faith…not fear…and we trust Your perfect will for Josiah.”
So many precious family members and friends sent assurances that God would get Josiah, and me, through this. Even these odd but comforting thoughts that wafted through my mind as I awoke brought comfort:
“Fear, the one mistake you can make.
Monsters that leap out and grab you every time faith promises.”
So today I choose to fear not! Regardless of the outcome, I believe the truth, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom. –Luke 12:32
I believe Josiah has a wonderful future and this is but a distractor. He will glean wisdom from this season of pain and rest. I smiled this morning when I saw his new blog post,
Finally Some New Pictures! Ubud and Thailand (part I)
Posted on April 9, 2011 by jfill
Hi everyone,
Well the one positive thing about coming down with a horrible case of Sinusitis and Shingles (double whammy!) is that I finally have some down-time to catch up on pictures of our trip. Each picture below is a link to a full Picasa album, I promise one of these days I’ll get a few albums up on Facebook but this will have to do in the meantime!
Yep, that’s my boy, I mused, someone who manages to move past his distractors.
*Author’s side note: After writing this post, Anastasia sent me her recent post Fear vs. Faith. I found this quite timely…especially since she included the same scripture.
JoDee Luna Art 
I read Anastasia’s post and yours, and I think we just cannot remind ourselves enough to walk in faith. I have a friend who says that when she starts to find herself getting all “verklempt,” she remembers that there is nothing in her life that God hasn’t already provided for–all that is past, all that is present, and all that is in the future. It’s already taken care of. She just has to walk forward with eyes of faith–the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
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Kay, I feel verklempt! What a great expression for when you feel like the bottom fell out of your life. I think I’m passed the panic stage. Now I just have an emotional hang over. Thank you so much for your prayers and words of encouragement.
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Thank you JoDee for this article. I needed reminded to not let fear win out over His promises. I too have been in the grip of fear over my son, Greg. The doctors recently told him that they would have to start amputating his fingers before gangrene set in. My heart has been aching and breaking again over his physical state. I asked him how he felt about this and his answer was ‘I either want God to heal me or take me home, I am so tired of suffering’. If he makes it to August he will have been on dialysis 26 years which will put him at the 1% of the country. A miracle that he has lived this long but it has been a life of much pain and suffering. I know that I need to let him go but my mother’s heart does not want to lose him. He has such peace which I know is from the Lord but I fight for that peace for myself. Please keep passing on words of encouragement as there are many of us going through life’s struggles and in need an encouraging word.
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Linda,
I cried when I read your comment. What a very long time your son has suffered and you have struggled. My mother’s heart is breaking for you. I understand the intense love for a son that you speak of and even the thought of losing mine makes me weep. I will pray for Greg and for you. I don’t think we mothers will ever stop struggling to let go. Perhaps this ache is part of the cost for loving someone so much.
I often doubt whether I should be so honest and vulnerable with my posts but when I read comments like yours, I know I can do nothing less.
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Blessings to you and Josiah. May your troubles vanish swiftly, and sorrows turn to joy.
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Thank you Carol. I spoke to Josiah this morning and he is improving. Thanks be to God.
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I’m so glad he’s improving.
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Thanks Thedesertrocks! I just spoke with him and he improves a bit each day. His eye site did diminish but nothing that glasses won’t fix. I so appreciate all of the concerns and prayers that came our way.
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