A New Light On Fear

I've learned something new about my fear. I've known it to a small degree for a long time but I have recently seen it with so much more clarity that it seems brand new. For the next couple of posts I'll be writing about it.

Have you ever heard the saying, “No one can make you angry”? The concept is referring to the casting upon others the blame for our own anger, rather than owning it ourselves. It conveys the ideas that anger is a choice, that people don't cause our anger, but their behaviors trigger a response of anger in us. The same goes for inappropriate fear. People and circumstances don't necessarily make me afraid. People and circumstances trigger fearful responses in me, but fear is a choice I make.

As I was talking with a friend recently she rephrased this whole concept in a way that made some significant lights to go on inside me. We were talking about anger and she said it something like this: “anger is there in a person and it finds excuses to come out.”

From whatever sources long ago, and because God's healing was not applied to them at the time, fear has taken up an entrenched residence inside me. Unhealed fear. Like anger for some people, it's there inside me. And it seeks expression. It seeks release. Like an intangible monster trapped in a corridor of closed doors, it seems to pace along the corridor of my day and my experiences. It searches for any door that might be ajar through which it can burst out of it's confining hallway and into whatever situation might be at hand. Sometimes it breaks in at the least provocation, not because there's a valid or rational reason but simply because there was the opportunity.

This shed so much light onto the subjects of fear and anger, particularly my own. It provides me with another dose of evidence that my emotions are not reliable. Because it can burst into any situation - logical or illogical, warranted or unwarranted - my fear cannot be trusted. That's an unfortunate thing because fear is a God-given emotion, designed to protect us from real harm. An out of kilter fear sensor is not a safe thing. While safety is the thing I tend to long for most, my misfiring sensor – my pacing monster – latches onto things I shouldn't be afraid of and actually keeps me from the things my heart longs for in life and relationships. It keeps me from freedom and from love.