Are you scared now?

Last night inspired this post. I will get to that in a second.

Everybody has fears about something (as much as the 4th and 5th grade boys in my Nebraska mission trip will insist they're not afraid of anything). There are many different kinds of fears you could have. An example of one would be the silly, illogical, totally irrational kind of fear. Like my fear of saunas. Don't ask me why I'm afraid of saunas, I just am. It's not really claustrophobia, even if I'm a little uncomfortable in elevators. In other tight spaces I do just fine. It just happened one day when I was about 12 or 13 and my neice and I were getting out of the pool and she suggested going into the sauna. I went with her and as soon as we closed the door, I flew into full-panic mode (and I never panic, so you can imagine what that must be like), pacing around, freaking out about the steam that wasn't even coming out yet, and finally I just had to get out. I have never stepped in a sauna since.

There is no reason for me to be afraid of saunas. However, there are other fears that are still small, but there's a reason you're afraid of them. I have 3 of those. One is needles, particularly when used for blood tests. During my "Headache Trial," I had a gazillion bad experiences with these (the curse of having small veins that roll around a lot), so I get lightheaded when I even think about it. Another is bats. This occurred when I was going down to the basement to do my laundry one day and suddenly a bat flew by inches from my face. I let out a shriek, looked at it for two full seconds to make sure what it was, then dashed upstairs. Mom and my little brother James came up to me, wondering what happened. I was so hysterical that I was laughing and crying at the same time. Mom kept asking if maybe it was a black bird, but I'm positive it was a bad (James, who'd never seen me like this, said, "If it induced this kind of a reaction, I'm pretty sure it was what she thinks it was, Mom."). I stayed away from the basement for a week (until Mom made me do my laundry again...), but I still hate bats today.

And the third just happened last night. I never even knew I had this fear. See, I don't care about bugs. My Mom and little brother are deathly afraid of spiders (the teeny pinpoint-sized ones might as well be tarantulas) and I'm the one who always has to squish them because they don't scare me. Same with bugs. However, I'd never seen one like this one before.
See, I was lying on my bed, listening to my iPod, when suddenly something small and dark fell from my window. Curious, I lifted my head to see what it was, and I saw this big ugly bronze beetle crawling on my bed. I don't think I like that, I thought, beginning to scoot away. Then it leaped into the air and began to fly. Towards me.
One blessing about me is that in situations of panic, I'm able to keep calm and levelheaded. Even when trying to run away, I'm able to think through things. My moment of panic lasted a couple seconds once it flew towards me and attempted to eat me (it might as well have been). I let out a squeak and leaped off my bed, slamming my head into the corner of the wall in my L-shaped room. At the time, I barely noticed I hit it, stumbling towards the door. Like with the bat, I checked to make sure what my attacker was, then exited my room and closed the door to keep the bug in.
After that, I stood in the hallway for a couple minutes pondering over what just happened and wondering who I should tell to kill it and Mom came up the stairs. So I asked her. Fortunately she's not afraid of big ugly bronze beetles and discovered it sizzling in my bedroom lamp. I still did not sleep in my bedroom that night.
And now my head really smarts from smacking it against the wall.

Anyhow, those are smallish fears that we have. But some are bigger. More profound. A common one with teenagers is the fear of being rejected. Left out. Laughed at. I have a fear of displeasing people. I hate it. That's why, whenever my opinion is asked, I will let out my usual safe, "Whatever you want." Even if I hate whatever it is the other person wants, I will go along with it quietly because I don't want even the remote possibility of hurting their feelings.
A couple days ago, I wanted my Mom to read something proposing a compromise between the jeans I wore (long story short, she thinks they're too tight, I think they aren't). I expected her to look at it objectively, but after reading it, she asked me a couple questions, and she looked hurt. Now, hurting anyone else's feelings is terrible. Hurting my Mom's feelings is practically the end of the world. Besides my mother, she's one of my best friends, one of the very few people I can really confide in (if I need to discuss a heart issue, she's the first one I go to). So that night I apologized about 800 times while she made a fruitless effort to try and tell me she didn't take it personally and she wasn't upset about it. I just couldn't get over the fact that I made her feel bad.
Even today I'm still haunted by past times, even years and years back, when I said something on accident that hurt someone's feelings. Whenever I think about them, a wave of guilt and remorse and shame floods over me, and I find myself beating myself up, saying, "Why would you say something like that? Why did you do that? What's with you? What kind of person are you anyway?" Of course the event is past and I apologized profusely to the people I offended, but I can't seem to get over it. The only way I can really try to move on is to not think about those times.

So, whatever your fear is, Paul told us to "cast our anxieties on [God], for He cares for you." Whether it's a little stupid irrational fear to something big that might be controlling your life, God wants you to give it to Him. You can't face them on your own, no matter how strong you are. Paul also said, "God's weakness is stronger than any man's strength." If you think you can outlast your fears, think about what God can do. Why not just give it to Him instead? I think He knows what He's doing.

It's something I have to constantly surrender. I have to realize that, if you put me in a room with 100 people, I am not going to be able to please every single person, as much as I want to. Not everybody is going to like me. I have to get over it, particularly because it used to very much hinder my evangelism. Sort of like, "If I talk about God, they might not like that, and I don't want to upset them or displease them." Now, I have become more outspoken in terms of God and sharing the Word. I don't hide that. That's who I am. If they don't like me for that, I should "rejoice, for that is how my forefathers were treated." The Bible even says I'll get a reward for that. Cool.

Of course, being my unique self, I still think over everything I'm going to say before I say it. I still take incredible care to not hurt anyone's feelings even accidentally. And I still say, "I don't care, whatever you want" when asked what restaurant I want to eat at (sometimes it irritates my family and then I'm at a loss for words, wondering what the heck I should say to make sure all of them are completely happy). That's who I am too. But otherwise, if I let it get out of control, it does dominate my life. So I have to constantly surrender it to God.

Have any fears you need to surrender?