{art: Léon-Augustin L’hermitte}

During my scared-to-death days, one of my greatest fears was fear of the future.

In fact, I can safely say that I missed most of my teen years because my obsession was with what might happen later.  Yep, it was that bad.

This fear came from a combination of things.  I came from a religious, cultural, and even family background that emphasized “what’s coming,” predictions of political and social disaster, an emphasis on historical tragedies like the Holocaust, the Great Depression, past and current tales of Christian persecution, and apprehension about an uncertain future.  These emphases combined to create a perfect storm of terror in my heart.

It’s true, terrible things have happened historically, terrible things are happening now to people around the world, and my future is not guaranteed.  I don’t know what I’ll see in my lifetime.  It won’t all be good, I know that much.  9-11 stands out as one of the key tragedies of my generation, and I know there will be more.  I may find myself front and center in one of these tragedies.  So I’m not hiding my head in the sand and pretending that bad things won’t happen.

But I believe that there are two areas where I went wrong.

The first is that I did not trust God.

We don’t know the future. 

A popular, mainstream Christian author wrote a book years ago that predicted that the economy would collapse by 1996 at the latest.  Never happened.

Another Christian “prophet,” revered by many evangelical Christians, sent out a “word from God” that described how to prepare for Y2K.  Which, as we know, never happened.

The bottom line is that we just don’t know.  I believe it’s likely that the tragedies of our lifetimes will blindside us.  The ones we anticipate may not happen, and the ones we experience will probably be things we never expected.  Just my opinion.

In light of this, I have to trust God.  I get to trust God.  How foolish to sit around dwelling on what might happen when there is a beautiful life to be lived!

My life has challenges.  Pretty big ones that I don’t talk about on my blog.  But that doesn’t mean that God has not given me an amazing life to enjoy.  He’s given me a calling.  An obsession with the what-ifs of the future would paralyze me and prevent me from doing what he wants me to do right now.

I lost far too many years that way.  I won’t do it again.

We often see not trusting God as no big deal.

 It is a big deal. 

Fear kills our joy, our potential, and our faith.

It’s wrong.  And it’s huge.

How about you?  What is your greatest fear of the future?  How do you combat that fear?

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This post of part of 31 Days of Fearless Mothering

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Please feel free to like me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter!  I would be thrilled!

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Look for my eBook, Fearless Mothering, in November!

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Linking:

WIP Wednesday

Women Living Well Wednesday

Works for Me Wednesday

Encourage One Another

Scientifically we know that superstitions are silly.

That doesn’t stop a lot of us from believing them, though.

Does it make you twitch when a black cat crosses your path?

When you break a mirror?

Do you knock on wood?

A lot of people don’t believe in those kinds of superstitions.  But what about Christian superstitions?

You might believe that if we pray a certain prayer—the Prayer of Jabez or the Lord’s Prayer, or for some, the Hail Mary—it becomes some sort of protective mantra in and of itself.  You might think that the words have power.  Or perhaps you even trust in the “salvation prayer” mantra to get you into heaven.   You think that if we walk an aisle and pray with a preacher, that somehow automatically secures your eternal soul no matter what was going on in your heart.

You might wear a cross or a medal in hopes that it will protect you like a talisman.

Or maybe you are scared that God will be mad at you because you throw away a tattered Bible, as if somehow the leather and paper and ink hold magical powers.

You might believe that there is just one way to raise kids and struggle with fear because you are so afraid of failing at the formula, the magical method that will ensure that your kids turn out perfectly.

And if you have a child that rebels or makes poor choices or rejects God?  It must have been that you didn’t follow the formula quite right, like a chemist who mis-measured and caused an explosion.

Legalistic rules are really just superstitions.  At one point I thought going to a movie theater was sin in and of itself.  And the first time I went I waited for lightning to strike.  There was no rhyme or reason to why I feared this, other than that I’d believed a religious superstition I had been taught.

Under the guise of spiritual warfare, you may see demons around every corner.  Car won’t start?  Satan is attacking!  Drought?  The devil has it in for you personally.  Got the sniffles?  Must be a spiritual attack from the scary, scary pits of hell!  (And if you say the right mantra, it will go away.)

That’s not to say that there isn’t real spiritual warfare, because there certainly is—but I know many Christians who live in fear of Satan and turn everything into warfare, when sometimes it’s just that we live in a broken world.

What about naming and claiming God’s blessings or planting financial seeds in a ministry so God will return a huge harvest to you?  Or the belief that God will always heal you if you have enough faith? Here we go with the mantra theme again!  This can cause so much spiritual and emotional distress when what you claim doesn’t come to pass.  Guilt and fear take over as you might believe that the reason God is not granting you your request is because you don’t have enough faith.

Belief in superstitions—cultural or religious—are a way we try to make sense of the world.  But the way we should make sense of the world is through Jesus and his Gospel—the good news of grace.

There is nothing we can do to make God love us any more, and nothing we can do to make him love us less.  He leads each Christian by the Holy Spirit.  He is not waiting to drop a hammer on you because you got the mantra or the formula wrong.

Stop living in bondage to superstitions!  Find freedom in the only all-powerful person—God!

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This post of part of 31 Days of Fearless Mothering

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Please feel free to like me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter!  I would be thrilled!

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In my upcoming ebook, Fearless Mothering, I tell about how God helped me to overcome a lifestyle of debilitating fear.  Look for it in November!

{art: Elizabeth Nourse}

We live in terrifying times.  What kind of world are we leaving to our children? 

It’s made even scarier because of the at-our-fingertips information we can get today.  When women kept their homes on the frontier, they might be frightened of the threat of Indian attacks or a wolf after their livestock, but news of that was sporadic.

Today, not only are we kept abreast of the scary things in our neighborhoods, but we hear of genocidal generals in Africa, mass murder in Norway, and brutality toward Christians in the Middle East.

We hear about our country’s enemies all around the world and what they might do tomorrow.  This news comes to us by way of sensationalist reporters.

If you’re the type to listen to conspiracy theorists, you may think that it looks pretty certain that we are doomed.

In addition, we are bombarded day and night with inflammatory, mean-spirited political news and commentary, with each side demonizing the other.  If we listen to either side, soon we are convinced that whoever doesn’t believe as we do are bloodthirsty goons who wish for our personal destruction and the destruction of our nation.

There is no end to the frightening news we can get if we want to.

It’s easy to adopt a bunker mentality and decide to hunker down and protect our families from all the scary stuff that’s out there or that might be coming. 

Some families do this by political and social action.  They believe that our hope lies in the change that comes with activism.

A few respond to this fear by going to radical extremes.  They stockpile food and weapons with the notion that they can somehow set themselves up to survive an apocalyptic eventuality.

Some just feel helpless but just worry all the time.

However you cut it, this kind of fear is a failure to trust God.

We must look to what he says.

He has determined the times and places we will live.  (Acts 17:26)

Like Queen Esther, we and our children were born for such a time as this.

The hearts of national leaders are in God’s hand.  He turns them whichever way he wants. (Prov. 21:1)

We aren’t to put our trust in political leaders.  (Psalm 146:3)

We are to pray for our leaders.  The way to live a quiet, dignified life is to pray for government authorities. (I Timothy 2:1-2)

Our hope is in Jesus and his Gospel, not in politics.  (Jesus had an interesting way of living in a scary culture.)

It’s my personal belief that the good we can do by activism is negligible in the grand scheme of things.  (The Right has been fighting the culture war for over 30 years now—and losing profoundly.)

hat’s not to say that God might not call us to political or social action.  However, we must realize that in the face of the monumental problems—real problems—what we can do humanly is very limited.  It’s easy to become discouraged and disillusioned by this.

 Unless we realize that our hope does not lie in our own efforts.

 When people change, nations change.

And in my belief, Jesus makes the best possible kind of changes.

How revolutionary is that?

If we call ourselves Christians, our kingdom is not of this world.  We’re citizens of a better, heavenly country.  Do we spend as much time and energy building that kingdom as we do promoting our earthly political agendas?  Do we look forward with hope to the day when all things will be set right?  Or are we obsessed with current events that simply reflect a sin-broken world?

So instead of frantic, fearful, negligible activism, yes–act as God leads–

but mostly pray and reach out with the love of Christ? 

Your politically opposite neighbor, your Muslim co-worker, the kid you fear may be the next theater murderer?

Show them Jesus.  Love them.  Befriend them.

Sometimes we say with resignation, “All we can do is pray.”  All we can do?  We have the ear of the all-powerful God of the universe and yet we see prayer as our last resort?

All the oppositional activism in the world will not change their hearts.  In fact, it might even alienate them.

But loving people unconditionally  and praying for them will reach hearts, and it may lead them to Christ.

And when Christ changes people, the world becomes better.

Don’t be pushy, just loving.

This is where real transformation happens—on your street and around the globe.

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This post of part of 31 Days of Fearless Mothering

*********

Please feel free to like me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter!  I would be thrilled!

*********

Look for my eBook, Fearless Mothering, in November!

Linking:

Thought Provoking Thursday
Thoughtful Thursday
Thankful Thursday
Life in Bloom
Thrive at Home Thursday

{art: Robert Gemmell Hutchison}

Jesus grew up in the Roman Empire. 

You don’t find a culture much more decadent and brutal than that one.

Yet during his time on earth, Jesus didn’t really address that.

He could have railed against the political and social ills of his day: authoritarian government, mass executions, public p*rnography, unwanted infants exposed to the elements to die.

He could have moved his followers to overthrow an unjust government.

He could have taught families how to bunker down and avoid Roman soldiers, sexual sinners, and all the forms of debauchery common in Roman culture.

He could have incited riots or staged peaceful protests if he wanted to.

But he didn’t. 

His focus was on people. 

The woman caught in adultery.  The five-times-married Samaritan woman at the well.  Zaccheus the unscrupulous tax collector.  The prostitute who washed his feet with her tears.  The sick.  The grieving.  The hungry.  The people whose lives were the fruit of a rotten culture, a culture disfigured by sin.  The people in our culture that most of us avoid.

Jesus lived in the world but was not of it.

Too often, I think, we don’t want to be of the world but we don’t want to be in it either. 

We withdraw to a sort of self-made, sanitized utopia under the guise of protecting our children or keeping ourselves pure, when really we just don’t want to soil our hands with people who disgust us.  We don’t want to face the work it would take to love without judgment and to extend mercy and assistance as the hands and feet of a providing, healing Christ.

Perhaps the greatest antidote to fearing our culture is to follow in the footsteps of Christ. 

Love God.  Love people.

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This post of part of 31 Days of Fearless Mothering

*********

Please feel free to like me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter!  I would be thrilled!

*********

Look for my eBook, Fearless Mothering, in November!

*********

Linking:

WIP Wednesday

Women Living Well Wednesday

Works for Me Wednesday

Encourage One Another

{art: Elizabeth Nourse}

I used to be obsessed with what others thought. 

As I thought about this recently, I remembered an embarrassing story from my new-mom days.

Guests were on their way to our house.  My oldest was just a few months old and they hadn’t seen her since she was born.

I put her in her cutest pajamas, spread out her cutest quilt on the floor with a few toys, and placed her in the middle of the blanket as our guests pulled into the driveway.

Little Miss Busy would have none of it.  Unaware of my plan to have her looking perfectly cute when our friends walked in the door, she crawled off the blanket to explore more interesting things.

In frustration I put her back. And of course, she crawled off again.

By the third time I was getting really irritated.  And then, before the doorbell rang I found myself appalled by my ridiculous behavior.

I was absolutely bent on creating the perfect impression to control what others thought of me and my child.

And when I couldn’t achieve that, I became angry.

Although I had operated in that mindset for years (which is manipulative, really), this time I saw it for the pride that it was.

Although this is a silly, over-the-top (though sadly true) tale, don’t we often care a lot about what people think about us and our kids?

And don’t we fear their disapproval?

This fear of what others thought was partially what drove me to set a graceless standard for my children that was higher than I set for myself, to try to create robotically obedient clones who would make me look good.  It wasn’t the only reason, but it was part of it.  It didn’t work, and it created a lot of fear in me.

Pride is often (usually?) the root of fear. Christ-followers know that he is big enough to handle whatever we are afraid of, yet we cling to the idea that our worry can somehow make a difference.

In any case, for years and years I heard words in my head, words from my past like, “Can you believe she let her kids act that way?”  “What little monsters!”  and “They should keep their children under control.”  Growing up in a “first time obedience” culture, I heard comments like this all the time.

And I was just plain scared of what others thought.

But here’s the deal, moms.

You don’t answer to other people.

You just answer to God.

What other people think is not important.

Oh, it’s ingrained in us to think so.

We want to be the best moms we can be.  We want to raise our kids well.  But we want to raise them for God and according to his directive, not for our parents, our in-laws, our best friend, a conference speaker, or that perfectly together mom that we really want to be friends with.

People are going to judge.  As a former Olympic-level judger, I can attest to that.  They’ll judge you because you are too liberal, because you are too disorganized, because your family doesn’t hold to their standards of modesty or movies.  They’ll judge you if your lawn is shaggy or if you struggle with homemaking.  They’ll judge you if you’re overweight or not stylish enough.  And they’ll especially judge for the behavior of your children.  Not everyone will, but there will be some.

After years, I finally realized that I didn’t have to fear this.

I should only worry about what one person thinks—God.

My loving father who, Isaiah says, gently leads those who have young.  My good shepherd who makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters, the God who restores my soul.  God who extends grace and mercy, whose strength is made perfect in our weakness.

That God.

His opinion is the only one who matters.

“The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.” Proverbs 29:25

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This post of part of 31 Days of Fearless Mothering

*********

Please feel free to like me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter!  I would be thrilled!

*********

Look for my eBook, Fearless Mothering, in November!

*********

Linking:

Better Mom Monday

Miscellany Monday

Hear it, Use It