Day 4: What Are You Afraid Of?

I drove to Miles City by myself yesterday to get groceries and supplies for the big Independence Day Camp-a-palooza and gave this topic some serious thought.  I'm not fearful by nature...I'm a pretty good worrier, but I'm not afraid of much.

There's startling things like snakes, creepy things in the dark (do we ever outgrow that?), loneliness, heights, depths, spiders, cellulite, tornados...all these things are VERY worrisome, but not terrifying to me anymore.  

Can I open my heart, here, and tell you something deep and dark?

(And they move closer to their computers, holding their breath, cupping their cold coffee cups in anticipation...)

:)

I was married before, when I was 19, and it wasn't pretty.  

When I was thinking of this topic, I thought, "I'm afraid of my ex-husband!"  How'm I going to write about THAT in the Chronicles???

But that's not necessarily true.

I'm not afraid of that person.  I keep my distance, that's for dang sure, but I think I could hold my own if push came to shove.

  

I think what I'm REALLY afraid of is being the person I was when I was at that point in my life.  See, I can deal with the other stuff....the creepies, the weather, the aging....but I never, never, NEVER want to go back to being the person I was then.  

I'm afraid of being so unsure of myself that I'll do anything to keep from being disapproved.  

I'm afraid of being mired in helplessness.

I'm afraid of losing hold of the tiny bit of sanity I managed to maintain.  

I'm afraid of being afraid.  

Fear is a horrible force that can make one do things they never thought they'd do, say things they'd never say, compromise, crumble, cower, crawl.  (I know...alliteration...it takes over sometimes. :)

Do you know...when people react in anger, it's usually motivated by fear?  

Over-protection is an obvious reaction to fear, running away is also pretty easy to tag.  

Fear incites arrogance.

It buries joy; raising self consciousness to a debilitating level.

I'm so afraid of being afraid, again.

The hope I have, now, is that 

take a minute, here....

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear"  1 John 4:18

I've got to hang on to the love, you know?  God's love, not man's.  

It's the only perfect love.

Except for the love my dog, Molly, has for me.  I'm pretty sure she's the personification of God's love for me on four feet, but she's not going to be around forever.  In fact, I don't know if she's going to make it through the summer, and that's sort of the other thing I'm afraid of.  Maybe a little.  

*I came back to post this, as it obviously didn't auto-post over the weekend...
We had to put Molly down over the weekend.  I had to face one of my greatest fears and I wake up this morning still facing it...no little dog beside me.