God has been talking to me a lot about fear this year, as you can probably tell if you’ve read any of my blog posts from the last few months. I have realized that we tend to do one of three things with fear:

1.        Obsess on it, thinking we are protecting ourselves or preventing something from happening by having control (an illusion) and coming up with all the worst-case scenarios. We sometimes believe that knowledge and information will help, but without any power we are devoid of actually keeping our fears at bay and they control us.

2.        Ignore it, believing somehow that if we face it head-on that will bring it into reality. Of course, this is similar to hiding from the monsters under the covers—I might not see them, but it wouldn’t do much in the way of protecting me from anything scary. Denial is just lying to ourselves, believing that we will not have to face anything we fear or anything difficult.

3.        Entrust and release it to God, believing that He can free us from it and allow us to walk through anything because of His strength within us. This isn’t an attempt at control or denial, but rather trusting Jesus to be with us and walk with us through whatever the fear is. He actually can free us from the fear, rather than continuing to spin round and round in it.