How To Stop Living in Fear

Halloween week is upon us, the week when everyone wants to experience a healthy dose of fear. We dress up in scary costumes and parade our kids around after dark, visiting haunted houses and homes decorated like graveyards with spooky sounds drifting from open windows.

There’s something about being afraid, whether it’s while watching a scary movie (I’m a sucker for another viewing of Halloween) or participating in a ghost tour, that gives us an exhilarating thrill. But being in a constant state of fear is not the way we are meant to live our lives.

I’ve written before about the passages in the Bible which implore and even demand that we have no fear and about not letting fear to stop you from living, but I think it warrants repeating. There is something wrong, even dangerous, in allowing fear to have power over us and the way we live.

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I Surrender

Our daughter’s wedding is less than two weeks away, ten days to be exact! To say that planning a wedding during COVID is stressful doesn’t begin to come close to what it’s actually like. It seems like there’s a new snag to deal with every day. However, our family has come to realize that for every bad thing that comes up, something good outweighs and outshines it. And each time I become frustrated and want to scream, Ken reminds me that Rebecca’s wedding day will be a beautiful celebration of love no matter what.

No matter what.

That’s a phrase I keep repeating to myself. No matter what we face, no matter what obstacles or stumbling blocks we hurdle, no matter who is there or not there, our daughter and the love of her life are getting married in a union blessed by God. And that’s really all that counts, isn’t it? They are being married, and God is involved. All of these snags, all of these inconveniences, all of these worries and fears, perhaps they are God’s way of reminding me to stop trying to be in control, that He is involved, that He has this under control, that all I need is to surrender to Him.

I need to surrender and to remember that from the day they met, God has been involved.

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