Fear

Fear is really an usual emotion. It can make you do a lot of odd things.

For example, my fear of needles has me crying, hyperventilating, and shaking like a child in the doctor's office over a shot at the age of 21. Its really rather embarrassing.

My fear of giving birth causes me to get goosebumps and feel sick to my stomach anytime the topic of a child going through the birthing canal comes up.

Oddly enough, I am more nervous about all the new people that are going to be in Uganda than I am about the remaining shots I have or even traveling to Uganda in general because of my fear of talking to people I don't know for the first time.

Seeing the movie Taken has given me a new fear about traveling alone in London.

But, I don't want to be the type of person who lets their fear get in the way.

In the past, I have let my fear of loneliness keep me in relationships much longer than I should have been.

I have let my fear of disappointing people cause me to say yes in situations where I wanted to say no.

I have friends who are finishing school soon and are going to graduate school. This is not because they have always had a dream about getting their Master's or because their field requires it, but because they fear entering the real world of responsibilities and leaving the comforts of their college lifestyle.

I also have friends who have thrown away great relationships because they let their fear of commitment convince them that something great wasn't right. They were so afraid of committing to a great person that they created problems and wrong feelings that didn't really exist to keep the thing they feared away.

I once had a friend who passed up on the opportunity to travel to another country because of their fear of trying new foods.

Like I said, fear can make people do odd things. I'd love to hear about the odd things that fear makes you or someone you know do, but that's not the point of this post.

The point is to say that I think we can do two things with fear:

1. we can run away from it, or
   
2. we can face it and over come it.

Francis Chan says the following things about fear in his book Crazy Love:

"But God doesn't call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn't come through."

"Much of our talk doesn't match our lives. We says thing like, 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,' and 'Trust in the Lord with all of your heart.' Then we live and plan like we don't believe God even exist. We try to set our lives up so everything will be fine even if God doesn't come through. But true faith means holding nothing back. It means putting every hope in God's fidelity to His promises."

Me?

I don't want to let the fear of what might happen if I really live my life the way God wants me to to get in the way of really living my life the way God wants me to.

I don't want to wake up one morning and say:

What if?

Excited about what really living really brings,
Jenna