Fear...

It's been a little quiet here in my corner of the world. Seth and I got back from Birmingham, and I think I settled into a bit of a funk after that. David and I are both dealing with some minor health issues that are causing me some annoyance and mild anxiety, so that has contributed. I have been fighting off a mild UTI for about two weeks now. Because I'm nursing him, they can't give me anything to knock it out of the park. The antiobiotic I have been taking has helped a good bit, but it hasn't cured things, and it makes me nauseous. I find all of that irritating. =) David has had laryngitis for over a week now. I'm hoping it's allergy related, but it's hard when your husband hasn't been able to speak above a whisper for this long. It's far too easy for me to be anxious about both of these things. I know they'll probably both go away eventually, but I have a bit of anxiety that they just won't. This is because I'm not in charge of either one, and there doesn't seem to be a quick fix for either.

These health items that I have no control over have led me to worry about Seth as well. Things have just been going so well for us lately. It's just been such a perfect year! So, of course, I can't just enjoy things. I have to worry about when the other shoe will drop on us. Thanks, Dad, for the worry gene. And I've also discovered that when you have a child, it's easy to be afraid of all the horrible things in the world that could come and get him. If he wakes up later than normal in the morning, it takes me about 30 seconds to plan the beautiful funeral that he will have because he's died from SIDS in his cradle.

Part of the problem is that I've lived long enough to see that there is a lot of pain and suffering in the world, and I've also personally experienced that God doesn't magically come and take it all away from you if you're his baby girl. The other part of the problem is that I never really learned not to fear pain. The thought of suffering coming to me again makes my stomach clench in knots. I am afraid of it, and I feel like a bad Christian for fearing God's will for me, if it involves something that I find less than pleasurable.

In light of that, God has brought some important words to me lately. The Girl Talk blog has been dealing with the topic of suffering this week, and this Sunday, our senior pastor preached an excellent sermon on suffering and God's sovereignty. One of our pastors has a young daughter who was recently diagnosed with cancer, and another of our pastors has a newborn baby girl with Down's syndrome. The topic of suffering is very relevant to our church at the moment.

Mark mentioned several things that hit home to me. I appreciated that nowhere in his sermon did he act like good Christians aren't fazed by suffering. He said that if you live long enough, you are guaranteed to suffer. You will lose your health, your friends, your family, your relevance. You may lose your ability to communicate, and eventually, every single one of us will die. He said that pop Christianity that doesn't prepare Christians for the inevitability of suffering is doing them a serious disservice. Suffering is part of this fallen world. We need to know how to deal with it when it comes, and we need to be prepared because, eventually, it is coming.

He quoted several passages from an article by David Powlison in the book, Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, that I found helpful. A friend had given me that book, but I hadn't read it until now. So I've been going through it in my devotions the past few days. Here are some portions that I've found relevant:

Grace means courage. When God says, "Fear not," his aim is not that you would just calm down and experience a relative absence of fear. He does not say, "Don't be afraid. Everything will turn out ok. So you can relax." Instead he says, "Don't be afraid. I am with you. So be strong and courageous." Do you hear the difference? The deep waters have not gone away. The opposite of fear is fearlessness. Fearlessness is active and enduring. It carries on constructively in the midst of stressful things that don't feel good at all. Courage means more than freedom from anxious feelings. Endurance is a powerful "abiding under" what is hard and painful, considering others even when you don't feel good.

There are countless ways to simply lessen anxiety feelings: vigorous exercise, getting all the facts, Prozac, cognitive behavioral therapy, finding the best possible doctor, yoga, a vacation in Bermuda, a glass of wine, getting some distance from the problem, finding support from fellow sufferers, throwing yourself into your work. Some of them are fine in their place. But none of them will make you fearless in the face of trouble. None of them creates that fruit of the Spirit called "endurance" which is mentioned repeatedly when the New Testament talks about God's purposes in suffering...None of them gives you high joy in knowing that your entire life is a holy experiment as God's hands shape you into the image of his Son. None of them changes the way you suffer by embedding in it deeper meaning. None gives you reason to persevere in fruitfulness through all your days, even if the scope of your obedience is constricted to your interactions with nurses at your bedside.

Suffering hurts. In my life, I will constantly struggle with fear if I am called to it. God may decide that He can't refine me the way He wants to without "the megaphone of pain" that He uses to get my attention in a way that nothing else will. I am also left to fight to believe that He has allowed my pain, and even though He has allowed it, He is still good. I have never read an author or heard a speaker who was able to give me a quick, 5-step program to cure me from struggling with that one. And I don't think I ever will. That one is just as much of a struggle as the first one. But I have decided that the struggle is worth it. It's nice to know, though, that I'm not alone in the struggle. After all, if endurance is what God is after, He can't get it from me without insisting that I endure.