Life Without Fear

The live news coverage from Boston last night was – I don’t even know how to describe what it was. My Dad lived in Watertown for a little while. He loved boats and I inherited that from him. Watching and listening to these people talking about the suspect in the boat – it seemed surreal. When you grow up somewhere, when you spend time with a certain group of people, living a certain way of life, it’s really disorienting to have those same people be eyewitnesses to a scene with bomb squads and special forces – it could be anyone I know. There’s something about the place where you grow up that becomes a part of who you are. I moved to New York in 1987, but somehow Boston’s still my home. I hear those voices, the voices of people I’ve known my whole life – there’s something so comforting in those voices even when they’re talking about blood and bullets.

It’s hard to believe that all this has happened in just a few days. Monday started out like any other day, and then we get to the stand-off and SWAT teams and lockdowns. Someone wrote in on the online comments last night after the suspect was caught, “WOW!! WHAT A DAY!” I’ll add to that - what a week.

Things can change in an instant, for good or for bad. We’re not promised tomorrow as the saying goes. For many years I lived in fear – I don’t even know what I was afraid of really, it was just a general feeling of fear that covered over everything like a thick and heavy wet wool. Have you ever had those nightmares when you couldn’t wake up and you were trying to scream and couldn’t do that either? I used to have them all the time and my waking life was like that I think, only I had gotten so used to it I didn’t notice after a while. About a year ago when I was eating breakfast one early morning when it was still dark outside, a man came to my door and knocked. The windows of my apartment open onto the street, and I have my own door that is half window too. When he knocked he said, “Remember me?” I had never seen him before in my life, and all I kept thinking was, he means, "Remember fear?" I told him if he didn’t get away from my door I’d call the police and he left. I remembered the fear, but I didn't have it any more. A few years before I was born again I met a woman who is a shaman. She did a healing for me that involved a guided meditation, and one of the biggest images I remember is that at one point in the meditation I was on a horse, galloping away from something, and I felt complete terror. When she asked me to turn and look at what it was that I was running away from, at first I was too terrified, but as she coaxed me to look and I finally did, I burst out laughing and said, “It’s just fear.” From time to time since then I’ve had my moments of fear, but since I’ve been born again, God has been taking me through each one to show me that I never have to fear again. Whenever I feel fear rising, He reminds me about Zephaniah 3:14-17. In my little Bible, verse 15 reads, “You shall see disaster no more,” and there is a note at the bottom of the page that says that in some translations, the word "see" is translated to "fear" - “You shall fear disaster no more,” and you won’t see it either – you won’t see it because it’s not there and you won’t see it the way you always used to see it even when it wasn’t there. The fear is completely gone.

Fear is the absence of faith another well known saying goes, though sometimes we still will have fear even when we have faith because faith is hard to keep going. It’s only when we start to doubt that the fear creeps in. When that man came by my door and said, "Remember me?" I remembered all right – I remembered what it felt like to be afraid all the time, but I wasn’t going to give in to the past. When the Lord started giving me a really big and crazy sounding promise last year, He gave me a prayer that was a warfare prayer. I found it on a tract at a church I often visit. It’s a long one, and it takes you through scriptural claims of God’s power in your life, but part of it talks about not giving in to emotions and not allowing emotions to take away from the power of God in your life. We can give in to the past easily. I can go right back to where I was when I was a child, frightened and alone, in a nightmare that I can’t wake up from, with screams that can’t be heard. But God says no to that nightmare, and He stops it with His voice. The few times I’ve had that nightmare in recent years, I’ve found myself waking up saying “In the name of Jesus.” There is no other name that has the power of that name, no other name that can free us from the nightmares of the past.

Here's the poem I said I would share here one day soon – today’s the day. I wrote it before I was born again and at the time I thought I was writing it for someone I loved. It's funny how God works. It was that person's betrayal that led me to know God, and to know that He was the one who I was really writing about:

What is there to say

To someone who has changed my life in every way

For the better?

Was lost but now am found

Was blind but now I see

Am learning to hear

To listen with my heart for the first time in years, if ever

It is as if nothing can hurt me now

Nightmares have been replaced by dreams

All my fears laid to rest

In your house

There is no place for dark spirits here

No room for those woes we bring on ourselves

Jealousy, anger, greed and avarice

Those addictions we think we need to get by

Cannot live here

Or rather we learn to live without them

Here in this house that turns darkness to light

I am learning for the first time what love is

Blessings,

Jannie Susan