When I am afraid...

I've always been an anxious and fearful person.   Let me just give you an example.   Back when Carey first started working at ITA he was working in Greenville, SC and traveling a lot.  As in every single week.    The first few weeks of him traveling to and from Greenville, I would call him a million times during that little 4 hour trip, just to make sure he was still ok and hadn't wrecked and died in a fiery car crash.  If, for some reason, he didn't answer his phone after two calls, I would start getting really angry.  By the fourth time, I would be livid and by the sixth call, I would be panicking.   Mind you, these calls were pretty much all back to back and it always ended up being that his phone had died and was having to charge or some kind of similarly logical reason.   I remember one time, he didn't answer after 2 hours of continuous calling.    Maybe you can image what kind of state I was in but if you can't, here's just a taste. At one point, I called the rental car company to ask if they had GPS tracking on the navigation system in his rental. 

Psycho.

Now that Piper is here I feel like if I were to let it, fear could completely overtake me. Not normal motherly fear but crazy, sinful fear. Like I see toys on the floor and envision me tripping, her flying out of my arms onto the hard tile and busting her head open.   She sleeps a little longer than is normal and I go running to make sure she's still breathing.   We take her in the ocean for the first time and she gets brain eating amoeba (THANK YOU Nonnie).

It's not like I sit around biting my nails and dwelling on all these morbid thoughts.  It's just that when any little thing happens, I immediately jump to thinking of the worst, most horrific thing that could possibly happen.  

Anyway, I was flipping through the radio stations the other day and came across a corney, Christian radio skit.  It was about fear, and I think meant for children, but I stopped to listen to it.    They kept mentioning the verse "When I am afraid, I will trust in You".  So I decided this would be my new verse to cling to when I had these moments of craziness.   I tried it for a while, with it being a comfort and making me have the right perspective only about 50% of the time.  In frustration one day I asked the Lord why I couldn't seem to overcome this thing.  Why is it that when I try to remind myself that He is always in control, do I get even more fearful?  Scared of what he might allow to happen because it's what is best for us in the long run.   ...I don't want what's hard but also best, dangit...  I want what's best, sure. But I want what's best to be easy.  And after many times of asking these same questions I had a thought come to me.  When intelligent or insightful thoughts come to me I know it's got to be Him talking to me.   I mean, let's just be honest here.      Anyway, the thought was that you can know a distant relative... let's say a cousin.  And you can know where this cousin grew up, where they went to school, who they married.  But just because you know these things about the cousin doesn't mean that you have a relationship with them.  You run into them every few months in the mall and see them at Thanksgiving and Christmas but that's about it.  You wouldn't necessarily trust this cousin with your life or the life of the ones you love most.  You trust, yeah.. but only to a certain extent.   Being a Christian since I was a very little girl, I've gotten used to terms like "have a relationship with". You can hear something so much and so often that you start to forget what it actually means.  Having a relationship with somebody is having a relationship. Talking with them everyday, knowing what they did last night... knowing them more than just in passing.  For some reason, because He isn't a physical person that I can sit down with over a cup of coffee (or a donut.  Again, let's just be honest) I keep forgetting that I have to make time everyday to "have a relationship" with Him. To not let life keep me from knowing Him.

I guess it's no wonder I have trouble trusting Him.  I let Him become just a distant cousin.  ...I mean, not that knowing and trusting Him makes the painful and scary things less painful or scary, right?  But like I'll have to take little toddler Piper to get her immunizations and explain why they are important for her well being and the people around her, she can always know that I do it because I love her and want what's best for her.

And also that she'll have a huge, chocolate covered ice cream treat waiting for her at the end.