Living Fearless

"People living deeply have no fear of death." ~ Anaïs Nin

This is my 500th post! How exciting!

As I reflect on my summer, I think it will turn out to be the summer of fascinating conversations. I have been blessed and stretched by frank and thought-provoking dialogue. Summer is not yet over and I know in the coming week, in particular, as I gather with former classmates from 30 years ago, that the chats with these women who have helped shape me, will continue to inspire me.

Recently I had a Facebook conversation with someone which took interesting turns and twists. We got on the topic of fears. I have realized some time ago that I had many fears. In my 40's I set out to conquer them. With my fear of heights, I climbed higher on the scaffolding every year until I made it to the roof to shingle. Of course, getting down was an adventure but I did it. I signed up for a kayaking class and on the first day came abruptly and brutally face-to-face with my fear of water...or rather being under water...when we had to do a wet exit. I did that too, though it was much more of an ordeal than I thought. I even tried hard to overcome my irrational fear of spiders, a fear that stemmed from finding a lovely little tarantula on me while traipsing though the Guatemalan rain forest. I found myself slowly checking off items from the list of things that frightened me silly.

I am not sure when I first lost my fear of death. I would guess it happened too when I was in Guatemala, standing in the back of a pick up truck with the Habitat crew, heading back to our hotel. An eerie feeling passed over me as the driver of the truck hesitated at a blind corner as we came out of a dirt road onto the highway. I remember looking at my friends, wondering what was about to happen. In that millisecond, a gasoline tanker came barreling full speed around the corner. If we had already entered the intersection, we would have been blown into tiny smithereens. My good friend Lori and I spoke of it later, in a quiet moment. We both agreed that we were ready to go Home if we had died that day.

I have been in several situations like that in my life--scary, I suppose. I remember being horribly ill in a remote Kenyan village and thinking I would be shot to death at the bank as I keeled over and the armed guards would think I was creating a diversion for a robbery. That made me realize that I can be a bit of a drama queen. A little rocket launcher incident in Congo followed by a riot mob creating havoc, made me wonder if I would see the light of day. I guess even some health issues at various points in my life have sobered me to the idea of my own death. All that said, when my friend asked what my fears were, I replied I was not sure that I had any. I guess conquering fear of death is a substantial one.

However, I have been reflecting on fears since and realize that, of course, I have them. Living deeply does balance them but still they exist. I thought of all kinds of silly fears, such as peeing my pants in public (see how humbling aging is) but I also started to delve deeper into what makes me tick. I am proud of some of what I uncovered. In university, for a conflict in the family class, I had to read a novel and then write a paper on how the family functioned in the book and how it compared to my own family. That was one of the most amazing projects I had to do in my academic career. I chose Rebecca Wells' Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and I could never have predicted how profoundly that book would change my life. The book was brilliantly written and has so many extraordinarily healing moments in it, if one can battle through the pain of it. My own truth was held in those pages. I was tired of dropping the basket. I could not live in fear of my own mother's harsh judgement and have her voice in my head all the time, insisting that I was not good enough. That year, during that project, I realized that I was good enough and that I had been all along. My mother was terribly broken and somehow, I translated that into my being broken to the point of being unfixable. At that moment, I stopped living in fear of not being enough--not being pretty enough, smart enough, outgoing enough, good enough--and started owning my heritage as a child of God, loved and loving.

I still struggle with some of that legacy but I come out of the downward spirals faster and recognize the lies faster than ever before. I don't feel so broken as I once did; now I see myself as scarred instead of scared. I think we can be as fragile as butterflies when we look at the tapes that have developed in our souls from our childhood. The fears pop up in the oddest places or hover around, chipping away at our best selves. They have the potential to ruin friendships, sabotage intimate relationships, and undermine our best intentions.

I hope to probe around in the coming weeks to see what fears still linger for me. It is always a good thing to find the beast and decide not to feed it, rather than let the beast find you and feast on your fears.

What about you?

What fears prevent you from living fully?

Peace,

Suzanne