No Hocus Pocus
"In English, fear is something we conquer. It's something we fight. It's something we overcome. But what if we looked at fear in a fresh way? What if we thought of fear as an amazing act of the imagination, something that can be as profound and insightful as storytelling itself?” These words belong to Karen Thompson Walker, an American writer and author of the novel, The Age of Miracles. In a 2012 TED Talk, she discussed the connection between stories and fear, and explained fear’s influence on our decisions. This promoted consideration of how I can harness my own fears to push me out of a brutal pattern of worry, anxiety, and doubt into hope and thanksgiving.
In thinking back to my earliest memory of being afraid of something, I recalled when as a child I first realized earthly living eventually ends; that one day I would no longer exist. The result of a heart attack, my maternal grandmother died at the age of 45. At her funeral, still vividly remember seeing my mother, seated in the front row with a classic black birdcage veil covering her tear-filled eyes. For a "church kid" having previously only heard death spoken of the mechanism that enables us to enter the pearly gates and enjoy walking on streets paved with gold, the weeping and wailing from various aunts, cousins, and other loved ones was confusing. To say that it was shocking would be an understatement. Although even at that young age I understood death as the way human beings pass from this life to the next, to be with God forever in heaven if they are in Christ, coming face-to-face with death’s harsh reality, given the loss those left behind still feel, made me afraid to sleep without the lights on for a very long time.
But I'm not alone in my fear of death, I know. It has proven tough for the most devout Christians to navigate well, partly because it is the one experience from which no one has returned to share insider information. Having a story about "How I Got Over,” is one thing, but literal resurrection is altogether different. Nevertheless, believe it or not, death itself hasn’t been the source of my worry that manifests into compulsion. It is not what has hijacked my thoughts, keeping me up too many nights to count, skillfully laboring to block me from enjoying peace. I often fall victim to the lie that I am God’s stepchild, a lost, forgotten, and unwanted soul. It demands some effort to arrive at this way of thinking, not to mention to stay there or be a reoccurring visitor. However, we are best at deceiving ourselves—at least I am. It feels natural for me to jump through all kinds of self-imposed hoops and entertain hocus pocus trickery that leads me to go so far as to call evil good and good evil, entertaining what Scripture says I should run from. But it all results in me clinging tighter and tighter to whatever makes me feel safest in a particular situation. And it’s from this posture that I begin to anticipate the worst scenario, as a default setting, always imagining that I am backed into a corner with imminent danger approaching. Worse yet, I soothe myself by supporting a cycle of inescapable burnout that says the only way to survive this big, bad, erratic and merciless world where even God’s love is fleeing, is to work harder, faster, and longer. That means you do all that you can to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Vacations are for suckers. You can rest when you die.
There it is. I said it. Now it’s out there in the open, hopefully as a means to help keep me be accountable for what I truly struggle with, without trying to pretty it up to save face.
In the past, and in some ways even now, I have presented myself as a capable and confident “superwoman,” who excels at pretending that she has no kryptonite. However, when you bottle exhaustion long enough, pretending and posturing, sooner or later the truth seeps out, exposing the sugarcoated, curated ideal, the mirage that was hidden behind frenzied hollowness and loneliness that like mold grow best in the dark. Within the span of 24-hours or at times merely 24-minutes, any occurrence—whether significant or not—has the potential to knock me three steps backward where fear, shame, and untruth rule, far, far away from the wholeness I desire to affirm in seeing myself how God sees me, as His treasured daughter. That quickly, I can go from praising God for who He is and what He has done to utter despondency, denying what I was just celebrating as true.
On the spectrum of “fight or flight,” on these issues it doesn’t necessarily take a whole lot for me to shutdown and retreat into delusion. Wading in and processing my many emotions are part of the restoration journey that I am on with the Lord. I am learning, though, that I cannot grant permission for my volatile feelings to rule the day or choke my ability to stand in awe-inspired recognition of the unrivaled love and power of God. The fact that God created us, knows us better than anyone can, and despite our rebellion chose to make a way, through Christ alone, for us to enjoy eternal life with Him is a miracle—that’s the Gospel and I need a daily reminder of it as much as anyone else. Scripture encourages me toward this end: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9)
God made you and I with a huge emotional range or capacity, which even more than cognition alone, imparts revelation into our everyday existence. Our job is to see it for what it is: a gift. Thankfully, revelation also enables it possible for us to make holy sense of our own brokenness and that found in this crazy world we inhabit. In a special women’s edition of Christianity Today, Trish Harrison Warren mentioned that feelings become destructive when they ‘jump the river banks.’ This happens through exaggerated doom and gloom, as well as an intoxication with the superficial.
Both extremes overshadow and stunt the predominant rainbow of persistent joy and love that seeks to impact me, that I might then impact others. Revelation makes a world of difference. It is only in the grace-filled acceptance and merciful accountability God gives that the tension of my raw honesty can be adequately addressed. Every one of my many hiccups won’t be resolved before I meet Him face-to-face. That’s life and that’s okay. Calling on the name of the Lord, then, is a great step because he will hear my cry. (Jonah 2:2) We should accept being held hostage by our feelings, but it is good to be frank with God about where we are. He already knows, of course, but it is a cathartic exercise we need to do regularly in order to grow in intimacy with God and strengthen our reliance on Him.
Cry out in confession and confusion.
Cry out in gratitude and groaning.
Cry out in jubilee and jadedness.
Cry out in pleasure and pain.
Cry out in repentance and rage.
“Our feelings won’t be wiped when Jesus returns and makes all things new; they will be amplified and purified. We will feel as we were always intended to feel—deeply and without sin,” Courtney Reissig wrote in her book, Teach Me to Feel: Worshipping Through the Psalms in Every Season of Life.
I think she is onto something. You go, girl!