When Fear Says We Can't

Photo by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash

We’ve always told our youngest son the story of the day he turned three. He woke up that birthday morning down in Texas (during language school) and told my husband, Peter, he had a dream he could ride a two-wheeler bike. He asked his dad to get it out of storage so he could ride it.

So, doing what all great dads do, my husband dragged out the bike and got ready to launch our little guy down the paved road on his fledgling flight. And, like all good moms, I scolded him. “Are you kidding me? You’re going to send him down the pavement? You’re not even going to start him in the grass? No helmet or training wheels? He’s three!”

“He said he can ride it.”

“He had a dream he could ride it!”

“Yeah,” my husband shrugged. “Let’s see what he can do.”

A three-year-old! Really? A two-year-old just the day before. Are you kidding me?

I’m not even going to tell you how the story ends because just the other day, I broke into our old computer and guess what I found? I had taped it. The whole thing. I didn’t remember that. But, here it is, my baby’s first try on a two-wheeler after a dream that said he could do it:

What happened? What made it possible for him in that moment to take a dream and make it real? How did he do it? 

The answer is in him: He believed with all his heart he could ride that bike. That he had everything he needed within him to make it happen. He didn’t stop to ask what if he failed. If he fell. If he got banged up along the way. He never allowed the fear of what “might” come to stop him in his tracks—to debilitate his dream.

Fear can do that. It can knock us out. And it’s usually not the expected punch—the jab or the right hook—the straight-in-the-face warnings to keep us safe; the reason we have fear in the first place (to avoid the cliff, to run from the snarling dog). But it’s the sucker punch, the one from behind. The one that didn’t feel like a punch until we’re down on the ground.

Fear speaks loudest through the voices in our heads. Voices from our past. From those around us. The ones that say we can’t do it. There’s too much at risk. We’ll fail. We’re not good enough. The ones that, by the time the list is complete, the dream is dead.

So, how do we conquer fear? How do we move forward?

Step One: Silence the Voices.

That sounds easy, but we all know it’s not. It takes work and effort to “take all thoughts captive in obedience to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). The voices and messages are embedded deep within us. And, even when we’re not aware, they can dictate our choices. Whose voice do you hear when you’re measuring your steps? When you’ve found form to a dream? Think about it. Listen quietly. The voices are talking whether you want them to or not. 

How often we allow people power over us; power in our heads, power in our lives. Often, it’s people closest to us, but sometimes, we even give this power to strangers. People we don’t even know. How do they gain a voice in our head, a place to determine our own value? Strangers? We give them an ear because somewhere, deep down, they confirm the lie. The lie that we don’t measure up.

Even good voices can hinder us. We all need cheerleaders, encouragers in our life, people to spur us on. But when we seek those out, when we allow the accolades to dictate our worth, we can end up as approval-seekers. We’ve listened to the wrong voice. 

But here’s the secret. There’s only one Voice that really matters. One that holds the truth of who you are and what you can do.

Step Two: Listen to the One.

Can you hear your Father’s voice? The One who calls you “dearly beloved child.” The One who formed you and knows you intimately. The only One with the power to give you worth, the One to place value on your life. His voice says you are held, forgiven, adopted, strong, whole, victorious, fearfully and wonderfully made, never alone, complete, dearly loved, and nothing can take you out of His hand. And His opinion of you does not falter because it doesn’t depend on you. It’s not a worth you need to prove. So, if that’s the case, how can another person, even a stranger, gain more access to your heart then Him? 

Step Three: Keep Pedaling.

When the disciple Peter saw Jesus on the water, he first asked, “Is it you, Lord.” When the answer was ‘yes,’ he got out of the boat. And because he got out—and he was the only one—he walked on water. He experienced the miracle. Do you hear Him? Is He saying, ‘I have placed this dream in you. You have everything you need, and I’m right here with you.’?

If that’s you, if you hear Him calling, step out. If He’s given you a dream, it won’t happen with training wheels or soft grass. Not even with an audience (even your own mother) yelling on the sidelines, “It’s not safe, don’t try it.”

I could watch this video over and over again. Not because it’s my little guy—and he’s pretty darn cute—but because it reminds me to carry my dreams with me, to pull them out of storage. To climb on. Pedal like the wind. And most of all, believe in my heart that, if God has given me a dream, I can do it.

A PAIR OF DUCKS- And how we find higher ground.

Photo by Christian Bowen on Unsplash

When we came off the mission field after ten years on the ranch, our debrief coaches handed us two plastic ducks. The kind you had in the bathtub as a kid. These “pair of ducks,” they explained, represented both the good and the bad of our experience on the field. There were parts we loved—launching a ministry, meeting a new culture and new people, freedom to dream. And parts we hated—unending demands, new rules we didn’t understand, less comforts.

But both were a part of it. Both the good and the bad. And both were a part of life.

A “pair of ducks”—A paradox. 

That’s what life is.

We run and hide. We fear. We question. We become angry with the system, angry at each other. And then we don’t. Then we find peace. And joy. And we rest in the blessings around us—the extra time with our kids. The new cadence and rhythm of our lives.

After the mission field, we lived in a 900 square foot house with seven people and one bathroom. In the frustrating craziness of that, we reminded ourselves that someday we would look back on that house with gratitude. We would see it as just what we needed in that moment—just the thing God knew we needed. And that the solitude would bring a measure of joy. A dose of healing. And a portion of rest. But it was hard to see when we were fighting for the bathroom or sleeping with the laundry spinning next to the bed. Or when we questioned why we were there and worried about what our future held.

So yes, a few years later, we see it much differently. But why couldn’t we see it then. Why couldn’t we see that house, the solitude shut away from the world for just a moment, as the haven it would become. Our chance to stop and breathe deeply for a while. Just a little while. To take it all in.

That’s how life rolls. That’s the paradox. That in the midst of the storm, there is something beautiful brewing. A new respect for one another. A new quietness in our souls. A new trust in our Lord.

And it’s not so much that we ignore the bad and focus on the good, but that in both, we find the higher ground. The greater purpose. We open our eyes to see the depth of both the shadows and the highlights. Because the full revelation requires both.

The question is, how will we look back on this moment? What will we see? And how can we find that now, not later?

The house on Cullen Street became a sanctuary when we bathed it in gratitude. When our shortcomings were laid bare before a good, good father. When we trusted all that He had for his children even when it looked scary and unpredictable. When we took a blind step, knowing He held us up. When we put on our spirit eyes and knew it went beyond what we thought we saw in front of us.

When we trusted. And allowed ourselves to grow and deepen with both pair of ducks in hand.

From the Desk of CS Lewis ... on fear and dying.

This is an excerpt from Steve Laube’s blog:

I want to thank Matt Smethurst for posting the following on his blog for the Gospel Coalition last Thursday (you can find the original here). He found a brilliant selection of words from C.S. Lewis that apply to us 72 years after they were first published. Just substitute the words “atomic bomb” with the word “coronavirus.”

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

— “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays