I woke up in a cold sweat, my damp shirt revealing the uncertainty and fear of my dreams from the night before...something about being out of control and other people dominating over me... I adjusted to reality and my heart relaxed a little; but my mind was swept up in thinking about the very dynamic of fear. What caused me to be afraid?
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I've fought fear all my life. I can see myself at 6, tears streaming down my face, begging my parents to let me sleep in their bed. I was certain I had heard a noise downstairs, and I just knew it was a man in a mask who had come to take me and all my dolls. It wasn't long after that, my father took me to a shooting range with one of his guns. He brought an empty Downy softener bottle, which he placed at the end of the range. After he had positioned me right next to him, he told me to cover my ears, and he pumped that Downy bottle full of lead. As I stared in awe at the assaulted plastic container, he said to me, "Christine, if anyone comes into our house, I will fill them with bullets, just like I did to that laundry bottle."
I guess that was my dad's way of showing me that I didn't have to be afraid. He was there to protect me. And for a while, that really helped. I had also been taught that Jesus and His angels were there to protect me, but I couldn't see them, and the thought of invisible beings in my room freaked me out a little too. When I heard noises at night, I started to wonder if my dad would be able to make it to the intruder before the man in the mask got to me, and again I wondered how an invisible being was going to protect me from a human being.
Fast forward 7 years. I was 13, and my family was living in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. It was late one night, and while my younger brothers were taking a shower, my father was loading his shot gun in the dim candle light at the kitchen table. I stood back for a moment, hiding next to the steel bar door that separated our sleeping area from the kitchen. I watched as he went to each door and double checked the locks and bars that held my family safely within. "Dad, what are you doing?" I asked. At first, he denied doing anything out of the ordinary. But I persisted, and he finally explained that he had fired our gardener for stealing from us. My dad had been warned that the gardener and a bunch of his angry friends might come back to rob and kill us.
I sat, wide eyed at the kitchen table, looking to my father for comfort. I was afraid, panicked, scared out of my mind. I was only 13, and my father had told me the truth. There were people who wanted to rob and kill my family in this God-forsaken foreign country. I stifled my tears. My dad put his loaded shot gun on top of the kitchen cabinet, grabbed a piece of paper and sat down next to me. He picked up a pencil and drew a picture of the large iron gate that protected the Embassy that we called home. He said, "Christine, you know the gate right outside our front door? Well, I saw an angel standing guard at the gate." He continued drawing. "The thing was- the angel's knee caps reached the very tops of the gate, which is about 9 feet tall. We have nothing to worry about, Christine. God has sent his angel to watch over us, and he is a bad ass angel!" My dad laughed for a moment, then he got serious again. "And, if for some reason, any guys get passed that angel, I'll use my shot gun to pump them full of lead." He winked at me, hugged me, and sent me off to bed. Somehow I felt safe. I knew two things- my father would never lie to me about angels, and my father was a great shot. I knew we would be okay.
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Fear has always been there- hiding somewhere in my heart, playing upon the very real possibilities in life- things that I don't ever want to experience. The loss of innocence, life, love...the list is literally endless. I'm at a place in my life now where I don't want fear to have any part of my heart. But how do I live life without being afraid of the bad things that can happen? The truth is- just because I believe in God doesn't mean I am going to be spared from bad things. Trials and hardships come all the time- it's part of life. I'm not guaranteed I won't face hard times, but I am guaranteed that I won't go through it alone, and that He will give me the grace to get through it. Is that enough? Is knowing that God will carry me through the hard times enough to not live in fear of them? I believe the resounding answer is, Yes, because that may very well be the only way to truly be set free from fear.
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