Lately I’ve been carrying a strange kind of fear. Not the dramatic kind, though I suppose that depends on how you look at it. It’s more of a quiet heaviness that sits in the background of my days and makes itself known when everything gets still.
This year, I’ve taken on a challenge I return to every couple of years: reading the Bible from beginning to end. A few chapters each day, moving through different books, until by December 31st you’ve read the whole thing. Right now, I’m in Exodus, the part where Moses is pleading for the children of Israel to be freed from Egypt, and God is hardening Pharaoh’s heart.
As a mother, the story of the firstborn is not an easy one to sit with. It isn’t comforting. I know there is something I am meant to understand there, but I don’t. Instead, my mind does what it often does when it can’t find resolution, it runs ahead. The fear takes shape in my chest, heavy and familiar, and I worry that even writing about it makes it louder.
At the same time, I have an overseas trip coming up with my daughter. It should feel exciting, like something I’m meant to look forward to. The location is truly a dream come true for me, and I know she will enjoy it too. When the invitation came, I jumped on it without hesitation.
But lately, I’ve been struggling to get through the fear.
The world feels so big. She is nearing adulthood. And after everything we’ve been through together, I find myself scared of the unknown in a way I can’t always explain. I hate flying. There is nothing fun about it. And my mind keeps whispering all the ways something could go wrong.
I think that is the point of fear, though. It reminds us how little control we truly have. In a world where troubling things happen every day, trusting God can feel harder than it should. Doubt creeps in. Then guilt follows, because Scripture reminds us not to worry, and suddenly the fear becomes layered—fear, followed by shame for feeling afraid at all.
There have been moments when I’ve wanted to cancel the trip just to quiet the what-ifs.
This journey is also coming right after a milestone in my life. I am finishing my Master’s degree and stepping into a brand new season. A season both my daughter and I have worked hard to reach, together and separately. It feels like I am standing on the edge of something I prayed for, something I worked for, and maybe that is why the fear feels so loud right now.
Fear has a way of casting a shadow over what is good. It makes you want to stay where everything feels predictable, where life feels solid and familiar. Some days, the temptation to stay home feels like the easier form of peace.
I’ve also carried fears about deeper things, about loss, about suffering, about the thought of being separated from my children. I once heard someone say something about heaven that unsettled me deeply, and it stayed with me longer than it should have. I love my children with everything I am. The thought of not knowing them, of not being with them, is painful to even consider.
I don’t fear death itself as much as I fear two things: suffering (the pain), and leaving my children behind.
People like to say, “Just live. Don’t overthink it.” And maybe that is true, but it is easier said than done when you are a mother with a heart that feels everything so deeply.
So I am trying to let this moment be what it is: a mother loving her child, a woman standing at the beginning of something new, a heart learning again how to release what it cannot control.
Maybe courage doesn’t look like confidence. Maybe courage looks like packing your suitcase with trembling hands and choosing to go anyway. Maybe trust begins the way it often does, not with an automatic sense of peace, but with one small step forward at a time.
And if you’re facing your own moment of fear, about your children, your future, or the unknown in this dark and complicated world, I hope you know you are not weak for feeling it. Love makes us tender. And sometimes faith is simply taking a deep breath and trusting that, somehow, you will land safely on the other side.
Comments ()