Bigger than the Boogie Man

I spent the vast majority of my childhood with crippling insomnia. My parents tried to send me to bed early, denying me naps during the day, playing whale sounds in my room, but nothing helped. I would lie awake at night and my mind would bounce from one topic to the next, turning in circles. I still have a hard time getting my mind to quiet down at night (particularly if I’m hungry) but when I was a kid, the problem was more than just turning my brain off, it was the thoughts that would come in the dark. It would only take a few minutes of restless wandering for my mind to conjure up some terrible image, scenario, or just a feeling, and I would be paralyzed with fear. I would stay under a thick layer of blankets even though I was sweating and felt like I was suffocating. My head would pound with blood in my ears and my eyes would dart around the room looking for whatever impending force would work its way in at any moment. I would try to distract myself, but eventually, my thoughts would circle back and I would be ensnared in terror once again. It wasn’t until I was nineteen and mostly over my issues with the dark when I recognized what I had experienced for so many years when I was little. I had a spiritual attack, and I was old enough and knew enough to recognize it for what it was. I hadn’t just been another kid afraid of monsters under the bed. I didn’t just have a “vivid imagination”. When I was told there was nothing to be afraid of, that wasn’t true. There was SOMETHING. I just didn’t HAVE to be afraid of it.

The last post was about Satan and the lies he tells us that he hopes will lead us to sin. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m pretty sure the most common lies Satan tells us begins with “you should be afraid that…” Satan wants us to live in fear because it keeps us frozen. If he can’t have our souls because those have already been claimed, he can go after our lives, because the only way we can lessen his kingdom is with what we do on earth. Fear is what kept Jonah from going to Nineveh. It’s what made Peter deny Christ on the eve of his death. It’s what keeps Christians from proclaiming their faith openly. And it’s what keeps us from fully living the life God intends for us to have. I fully believe that when we struggle with sin it is because of a lie that we believe. At least for me, most of those lies start with a reason for fear. And I think it’s true for everyone that fear is what stops repentance and keeps us bound to our sin, no matter what lie it’s attached to. You may be afraid of how your Christian friends will respond. You’re afraid of failure. You’re afraid of the pain that comes with giving something up, even if that thing is hurting you.

The problem is that fear seems to make a lot of sense. In a world mostly influenced by an atheistic point of view, fear is logical, while faith is idiotic. We worry and get stressed out about everything. Some parents think that the more they worry about their kids, the more they are just expressing love. After I had learned enough about angels and demons to no longer be cripplingly terrified at night, I realized I had a terrible struggle with anxiety. But then, instead of trying to assure myself that there was nothing there to be afraid of, I began to try to justify by saying that what I feared was reasonable. The truth is though, no anxiety is reasonable. Fear is a natural, biological, God-designed response to things. But that’s all it is, a response. A momentary alert system to lead us to decide to fight or flee. It was never meant to last, never meant to control our actions, and never meant to become a glorified fixture of daily living.

Jesus did a lot of taking about fear. Specifically, not to. The first thing angels tend to say when they meet a human is to inform them not to be afraid. What I don’t think most Christians realize is that God COMMANDS us not to be afraid, the same way he commands us not to murder and to love one another. God’s commands are in place for our good, his good, or the good of other people. Therefore, fear is somehow damaging and needs to be exterminated, the same way we would exterminate termites that could slowly and silently devour and destroy. The biggest turning point for me in my fear was asking myself, “Would I rather follow the command of God almighty than face the consequences of ignoring him?”

The second biggest turning point was when I realized how to obtain the antidote to fear. Peace was a distant and longed-for dream, until I heard or read at some point the words “Peace is resting in the love of God”. I don’t remember where that sentence came from, but I find myself repeating it in my head every day. I know that nothing can separate us from God’s love. No matter what happens in our lives, we trust that God loves us, that nothing he allows for us is unknown or wrong. There is much we must struggle with, much that seems difficult or unfair, but nothing we have to fear if we know God, our loving and all-knowing father holds us and the universe we are in. God wants us to reach above our circumstances and find him. The command not to worry was never given a condition. And probably the hardest truth of all is that we don’t have to be doing well to see that God is good. We can trust him. We can rest knowing that even if our biggest fear happens to us, he will have a plan for it, and in time, all suffering will be obliterated. 

I tell myself these things when money seems to be a distant memory, when I look at my son sleeping in his crib and start to imagine a billion things that could happen to him. I say them when I’m in a car with my dad behind the wheel. Mostly, I say them when Satan is trying to tell me that whatever God wants for my life is too scary to pursue. I’m a long way away from being fear-free. But I also know what it is like to have peace, and that alone is still a miraculous gift. There are a lot of mistakes Christians tend to make because of fear. But there are also countless blessings that come when they choose to have faith instead.