"Are you afraid of being afraid?"

So, it has been a beautiful start to my summer (which if you recall, I was dreading). I’ve spent a lot of time with my family, seen my friends a couple of times and enjoyed the sun.

I headed over to a neighborhood park just a couple days ago to read Chasing Daylight. When I arrived, I was the only person at the park, but within just a few minutes there were kids running everywhere. It made me miss the children from my old job, but after watching them for a few minutes, I turned back to the inspirational message of Erwin McManus.

After a few more minutes of reading, I overheard a conversation that two girls were having on the jungle gym about 20 feet away from my blanket.

“Aren’t you scared to climb up to the top?”
“No, I’m not scared.”
“Are you fearless?”
“What?”
“I think you’re afraid of being afraid.”

Now at first, I laughed inside and a little outside. Neither of these girls could have been any older than 8 years old and they seemed to be having such a philisophical conversation. As I went to turn back to my reading I asked myself, “Are you afraid of being afraid?” This caused me to pause for quite a while.

Normally, when people list their fears they include things like spiders, bugs, sharks, open water, the dark, drowning, dying, etc. When I am faced with this question, I can never really come up with a definite answer. And no, this is not because I try to be fearless and can’t admit to being afraid of things. It is simply because I haven’t found something that I am truly “deathly afraid” of. Sure, I don’t really like spiders and bugs and I wouldn’t be happy face to face with a shark. In the pitch black or open water I’m not sure if I would comfort and drowning or dying are not exactly pleasant in my mind.

When I asked myself “Chelsea, are you afraid of being afraid?”, I found my fear. I don’t want to be scared or worried, paranoid or afraid.

Perhaps this means I am a coward. I am certainly not proud of this, but I can say that now that I am conscious of it, I will step out of my comfort zone. I will put myself into situations where I am uncomfortable, afraid, uneasy, nervous, worried, paranoid—whatever.

I am ready to face challenges and go after the difficult.

I learned a lot from this young girl. I discovered my fear and since discovering it, I have found out that the only way to go after what is important, is to look this fear straight in the eye and conquer it.

This lesson I learned on a sunny afternoon from a young girl is one that has God’s name written all over it. There I was reading a book all about seizing divine moments, wondering how all of it would fit into my life specifically, and I was handed the tools needed to go out and find that purpose. Light was shed on the fact that I need to face this new found fear of being afraid before I could go out and seize divine moments. Now it all makes perfect sense.