Fearless

Yes this is my second post this week, but I write when I need to calm myself down.

I'm a worry wart. This, too, manifested itself as a part of my life after my dad died. It's something I really don't like about myself. It's a daily struggle for me. I worry about where I'll be tomorrow. I worry about what I will be doing in 5 years. Will I get married? Will I have babies? to: Am I doing enough for my family? Let me also mention I have control issues. I hate not being with my family, because I feel like I have some control when I'm with them. No, I do not want to control what they do, but I feel like I have control that I could be there in 5 minutes if they needed me. My worry used to be debilitating. 

I was a senior year in high school when my inability to sleep really got started. My worry kept me awake at night. I was just so anxious about what the next year in college held for me. I'm also the type of person who does not function well on little sleep. But, when I lay in my bed for 8 hours, I'm really probably getting about 6 hours of sleep. I tend to wake up in the middle of the night and not go back to bed. My mind starts reeling and I just can't turn it off. Over the last 3 years it's gotten a lot better, but it comes and goes. Right now, with finals and realizing I'll be student teaching in a few months and knowing I'll be in Athens all summer...I'm anxious. Add to that that there are some tough things going on with the people I love; I'm not sleeping. You can all see that by the fact that I'm writing on this blog at 1:30 in the morning. I'm usually in bed by midnight. My residents see me up past midnight and ask if I'm ok! My residents...another cause of my worry: did I do enough for them? Was I a good RA? Did I make a difference? Did I offer them each the individual support they needed? I just don't know. Needless to say I haven't been falling asleep until close to 3 am every night and then sleeping until noon. This has to stop before I got home for my 3 week break because two of my little chickadees like to come in my room around 8:30 saying "Toria are you awake?" Oh how I love my little Robby and Caroline (and Drew, Jacob, and Kristy and Luke's little one who hasn't joined us yet!)! Which leads to something else...

I follow the Tripp Halstead updates on Facebook. For those of you who don't know, Tripp Halstead is a two year old who, in October, was hit in the head with a tree limb while playing outside at daycare. It was a freak accident and left him severely brain damaged. Anyway, I was looking at their page and looked at the albums from before his accident. And I thought, "all they did was send their little boy to daycare like they do every other day." And I thought about the Sandy Hook tragedy, and those people just sent their children to school, something millions of people do on a daily basis. Things change in the blink of an eye. So why do I allow my worry to consume my thoughts so much that I can't live in the present? I frustrate myself so much by doing this.

My mom and my sisters tell a story about me from when I was little, before my dad died. I was a fearless child. Like most suburban neighborhoods, we have a pool down the street, and we spent almost every day during the summer at the pool. Well, when I was learning to swim I hated my floaties, but what kid doesn't? I wanted to be like my sisters and swim without help and in the deep end. So in the 2 seconds in which my family would turn around to put my floaties in the pool bag, I would run full speed ahead and throw myself into the pool (such an obedient child, clearly.). Needless to say I would give everyone a heart attack and someone would have to jump in after me and save me. I'm sure my family learned to anticipate this happening. 

I would jump into those waters because I knew someone would save me. I knew that with help my head would pop back up out of the water. The water should have been scary, but I had no fear of it, I knew I would have help and no one would let anything bad happen to me. This leads me to my question: Why am I not like that with God? Trusting God is like standing on the edge of the pool, I say I run into those waters, but right as I get to the edge I hesitate. Why? Because it's scary- but jumping into that pool was scary. But I knew my family would save me. Well, the Bible teaches me that God will always save me. In fact, I've already been saved through Christ. But Satan tells me otherwise. He tells me that there are dangers in those waters. Satan tells me that God won't be there to save me. Yet I've seen throughout so many times in my life, especially in the last year, that God will never abandon me. He won't ever let me get to a point where I'm not capable of being saved. But it's hard. It's hard to dive into the deep end with God. So many aspects of this world tell me no. 

As I watched the news today I saw coverage of the Boston bombers, and then learned that there was a shooting at the Houston airport. My heart breaks. And the only thought that came to my mind was, "this world needs Jesus." We live in a scary world, and our lives can change in an instant. And following God and jumping into the depths of his love and water is hard; it's scary, because sometimes He gives us answers we don't want, and sometimes He allows us to go through things so that He can refine us. But why am I so fearful all the time? I don't want the enemy to win my heart or my thoughts. I want God to. 

I want to be fearless.

Do you?

Smile, God loves you!

"Do not be anxious in anything, but in everything, with prayer and petition, with Thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."
-Philippians 4:7 (NIV)

"Cast all of your anxiety on Him because He cares for you."
-1 Peter 5:7

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more that food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or stow away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
-Matthew 6: 25-27