I woke up this morning thinking about the topic of discussion that is planned for tonight’s Bible study and that topic is fear. We’ve been asked to name our greatest fear. In asking the question, we suggested everyone look for what I will call a more substantial fear, rather than simply something we can avoid (like snakes or heights). I don’t know that I like this assignment, because in thinking of my “fears,” I'm starting to get a snowball effect and before thinking about this subject, I wasn’t even aware of really fearing anything!
Years ago, Bette Midler sang a song, “The Rose” it is one of my all time favorites and was also one of my Mom’s favorites, enough so that I calligraphied it and framed it and it hung on her bedroom wall, right next to her side of the bed. Some of its most captivating lyrics include :
It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance
It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance
It's the one who won't be taken who cannot seem to give
and the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live
The above pretty much sums up my fears!
My heart has been broken many a time and it usually is broken by other people. Somewhere along the line though, someone uttered this phrase, which I find to be interesting in its significance, “Hurt people, hurt people.” Whether or not we want to see ourselves, we are all hurt people, so we all have this capacity to “do unto others what they have done unto us.” But how badly have you been hurt? Have you been wounded to the point that you avoid any form of enjoyment? (life's dances?)
My dreams make me ask myself a couple of questions. What were they? And what are they now? See, I think as we grow so do our dreams and I’m not talking about growing larger. I think we outgrow some of our dreams, especially as we start realizing them. When I say outgrowing them I don’t mean that we no longer want/need the product of those dreams, I mean we might have achieved it and then look to dreams beyond it. Take for an example marriage. It was my dream to be married and having been married for the past 29 years, I’m not looking to still try to realize that as my dream any longer, and FYI, I do love my husband! What I am referring to is the dreams we are still seeking. Incidently I consider myself fortunate to have had God lead me to the right partner, but it still took/takes a lot of work on both our parts (Bruce’s and mine) and I have to admit when led in this direction, it was before I was even conscious about wanting God in our lives. This same dream could be in relation to being a parent. Again, I’ve been very fortunate to have realized this dream, twice! But sometimes our dreams require us to do a bit more work, again using the dream of having children, what happens if you are infertile? Do you withstand the ordeal of being tested to find out which partner has the “problem?” And upon finding out that “you” are the "problem", how does that make you feel? Do you then go through the necessary steps, whatever they may be, to still try? Do you adopt? I love the idea of adoption, my sister and her husband adopted a baby boy from Korea, 12 years ago. My son’s fiancée was adopted as a baby and one of my dearest friends also adopted a baby years ago. The point being is that these 3 families realized their dream of being parents by taking that chance. There was a 3-fold blessing in each of these scenarios, the birth mother chose life, the blessing of the child to the parent(s) and the blessing of the parents to that chosen child. But what about the dreams we now face, especially if we are finding ourselves older and in this economy unemployed? What if our “dreams” went up in smoke – our marriage disintegrated, our job lost for whatever reason, our children who have passed away before their time, especially if they passed before us, their parents? What do we dream and look to take a chance on now? Are we afraid?
I have been taken advantage of more times that I can count. I put myself out there to offer assistance hoping that when my time comes and I need help with something, someone will remember that I helped them and then return the favor. Unfortunately living with that expectation of having the favor returned has been a source of hurt for me. The cynical me, believes that this occurs because people either forget, are unwilling or are too dang busy in their own lives to be able to help others. Consequently what we are seeing in society is a shutting down of our civilization. Growing up, I watched as neighbor upon neighbor erected back porches, one after another, right down our street. The men, our fathers, all pitched in together and the payment was a bucket of beers that they drank together at the end of the day. Now I’m not against contractors, they make their living building those back porches, but what happened to our communities? I walk past houses in our neighborhood and noticed blinds that are always closed, shutting out the light and their neighbors. I give now out of the overflowing of my heart, I no longer hope or seek repayment.
Finally, the last stanza of the song, “being so afraid of dying, that you never learn to live”. To me, this is the absolute key to everything about life. This is the stronghold, or fear, that Satan uses to paralyze us in our movements. This is so crucial because in our fear of failure we no longer even make attempts. I’ve been there and I use a boatload of excuses to stay here at times. Those excuses can look like this (generalized, not specifically mine) – I’m too old, I don’t know how, I don’t have the money, nobody likes me and the list can go on and on. Broken down to the fundamental roots, dying is the equivalent to failing and living is on par with succeeding. We have been so beaten down from either trying and failing or by believing someone else’s opinion of our skills, that to risk trying is like attempting to scale a mountain we have no business climbing. Crap, I’m so busted in this conviction. I’ve let someone else’s opinion of me take precedence over my opinion of myself. Someone else’s view of my life has colored my picture!
Which brings me to a card I sent to Nancy, during her ordeal with pancreatic cancer. The card showed a picture of a mountain and a person standing in front of it. It read “Don’t tell God how big your mountain is, tell the mountain how big your God is!”
This card chokes me up every time I think of it. I’ve just had the realization that I try in proportion to how strong my faith is. I need to really think on that statement some more, but I still want to make this other point. I have been blessed to know many family and friends who have had cancer. You want to talk about a mountain to climb! And, that said, take out the word cancer and substitute it with any other life threatening disease. The thing is, as these friends/family members go through this battle, they are facing a huge mountain and they absolutely dig their heels in and claw and scrape their way through trying to reach the top, their success (lives) depends on it. This take courage of heroic proportions and I’ve been fortunate to have been part of their lives to witness these actions. These folks have faced “death” and if they’ve been fortunate enough to have beaten it, they then seem to have learned the lesson that they are going to make the most of their lives, from that day forward and I’ve watched some of them shed the excess baggage of their excuses and do just that! Which leads me to this point, why is it that we find it so difficult to learn from someone else’s experience? I wish to be totally open to those experiences thus shedding that excess weight and moving forward.
Dying isn’t failure if you allow whatever it is you are attempting to just be an experience! If it winds up being a negative experience, then you learn you don’t want to attempt that particular experience again, so try something else until you find that right experience that leads you to the outcome of your desires! Sounds simple, but we first have a mountain to experience and that mountain unfortunately is in our minds!
“Don’t look at that mountain and tell God how big that mountain is, tell that mountain how big your God is!”
Looking up!~Barb
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