Fear Not.

"For I am the Lord your God, who holds your hand, and says to you today, 'Do not fear. I will help you.'"

After tons of singing, crazy motions, crazier kids, and some ill-fated Armor of God Bunko, our kids sat down to make their craft: a beaded bracelet that says Fear Not on it. It's always interesting to watch kids with beads, especially when they have letters on them. Bracelets end up with backward and upside down letters, spelled wrong, it's fantastic. A couple of us teachers snuck some beads and string to make our own bracelets and I've been kind of reflecting on mine today.

I lived with a lot of fear in Spain. I know they say "you don't have to be afraid, God will handle everything and He'll take care of you." I had to say that to myself a lot last semester, but the fear kept creeping up on me even though I knew these things. Some days, it would be just a little thought in the back of my head; other days, it was almost paralyzing. I was afraid of speaking Spanish incorrectly, of looking like a foolish American, of misrepresenting my culture or offending their culture, of being harassed on the street (especially at night), of getting lost and not being able to find my way back, of disappointing and/or upsetting my host family, of struggling in my classes, of not passing the OPI, of not making friends, of traveling, of not being good enough, of appearing weak...

Yeah. It was a lot of fear.

I came to realize that God doesn't take away fear. He does, however, show you how to live through and overcome your fear. Fear is something that doesn't come from Him. Fear is definitely Satan's tool and it's one that He can just plant and it will do its thing. God showed me that what I was afraid of was almost always situations. All I had to do was create a plan for the situation in order to live through the fear I had of the situation. For example, if I was feeling particularly anxious about walking home some night, I could always ask someone who lived near me to walk with me so that I didn't have to walk alone. Or struggling in class. I kind of learned this one the hard way: I did end up struggling in class and I wasn't used to that. During the week of midterms, I had two final exams for 7-week classes on the same day and studying the night before was a real challenge. I received a C on one and failed the other. Guess who's not used to failing things. Anyway, I had to seek help at that point in order to not fail the entire class. Unlike at Calvin, the total class grade is based on the midterm (which took place 4 weeks before and on which I got an 85%) and the final exam (which I had failed). If you do the math, that is an incredibly low final grade. The directora and I worked out a plan that involved some tutoring and a head-on confrontation of my fear of failing. Everything turned out okay, and I'm much less afraid to fail things now.

Fear will break you down if you allow it to. It starts in your head and works its way into your heart and the further it embeds itself, the harder it is to get it out. It's kind of like when you were a kid and you got a splinter. I always tried to pick my splinters out with just my fingernails, but I only ever succeeded in getting it stuck in further and making my skin all red and puffy. My dad always had to go at it with a tweezers to get it out. I think it's the same way with fear. You can try anything you want to try and pull that fear out of your heart, but Satan will always make sure that it stays there, buried deeper than ever. I had to ask God to help me live through the fear as He worked on teaching me how to overcome it. It took some patience, which is not always something I have, but I survived. God's power prevails once again. Take that, Satan.

Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident. (Psalm 27:3)
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. (Isaiah 43:1b)
You came near when I called you, and you said, “Do not fear.” (Lamentations 3:57)

FEAR NOT.