A Hall of a Day

A few weeks ago I was dog sitting for my neighbor.  I had my seventeen year-old, Natalie to accompany me to his house one night.  On this particular night,   it was dark when we went over.  As we approached the stairs there was a sudden rustling in the woods.  Before I could assess the situation, I found myself being thrust to the handrail, as my first-born gallantly leaped up the stairs to leave me to fend for myself.    I was in total disbelief that I had raised an, “every woman for herself” being.  I mean none of her actions thus far have ever led me to believe that she would abandon someone in a time of possible crisis, much less me the one who birth her, the one who has the stretch marks to prove I carried her while she was growing and stretching me in every possible direction.  How could this be?

My face was expressing as much confusion and contemplation as I was trying to process the whole incident. Unfortunately, it always shows what I am thinking even when I try to have an expressionless face.  At the moment Natalie’s feet hit the porch, she looked at me and of course my face displayed exactly what I was thinking.   The following raced through my mind, Where did I go wrong in my parenting that she would abandon me so quickly?  Her jumping in track has paid off because I think she bounded up the entire staircase.   She has the whole fight or flight thing figured out, as you can tell my mind was going everywhere.

In that moment we made eye contact and she began apologizing, “I don’t know why I just did that; I am so sorry, I just let fear take over before I thought.”  As I am cleaving to the handrail in disbelief, it smacked me in the face, FEAR.  It is amazing how God can use a situation that I now harass my flighty child about to teach me a lesson.   I have allowed fear to keep me from stepping out of my comfort zone to many times.  See fear can cripple you, or cause you to run, abandoning what you love most in some instances.  If we give into fear we can miss out on a lesson, as well as, a blessing.  God ask that we trust Him, but how many times do we run from Him out of fear?  How many times do we miss out because we are afraid to take a leap of faith and use our God-given talents? How many times do we allow fear to control us, to keep us from being who God has called us to be?

I personally could make a list of times that fear has crept into my life and kept me from God’s will.  How about you?  Sometimes you are going to fail, but don’t let fear allow you to miss out on God’s calling in your life, because it can be a blessing, but if not It will become a lesson.

2 Timothy 1:7 For God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness; but of power and love and discipline.