Part Two: Fear and Other Things You Shouldn’t Let Run Your Life

The blog post with this title has been sitting in my drafts folder for three months, untouched and untyped.  I have felt so incredibly unqualified to do everything this summer—I’ve been working as a pretty good bakery employee, but I’ve not been doing half so well at everything else.

(And this is going to be a long post sort of analyzing why.  I kind of meant it to be a follow-up to the first post with this title, but it only loosely ended up that.)

Um, I’m going to Istanbul, Turkey in the last two weeks of August.  I’m going to the School of Ministry in Toronto in September (literally two days after getting back from Turkey.  ohyai).

And—well.  That fear thing?  It’s been getting worse.  Steadily and insidiously worse.  It’s consistently the first thing I feel when I wake up in the morning.  More often then not, it’s been getting me at night, too—I’m impressed I’ve slept even passably well in the past month (“passably” being 5-6 hours a night, even though I’ve been more or less scheduling bedtimes to allow 8-9 hours).  These things I should be really excited about—traveling and doing ministry and immersing myself in God’s presence—have become monolithic lists of Things To Do and Money To Make.  I can barely remember why I wanted to go in the first place—I only that I did, so very, very, very much.

I have all the money I need for my Turkey trip.  I’m turning in my passport paperwork tomorrow.  I still have research to do for the trip, and shopping, and packing.

By the time I take a hiatus from my job in mid-August, I will have saved about $2000 of the $7000 I need for Toronto.  I’m in the process of sending out support letters.  I should be able to turn in my application at the end of July.  I have to pack and plan and shop for this…and I have to raise $5000 in five weeks.  Which looks like lunacy.

I’m terrified.  And I’m trying so hard not to hate myself for allowing fear to keep me paralyzed, in a stranglehold, for the past year.  I’m trying so hard not to look at the entirety of 2013 so far and feel like it’s been a failure—like I’ve been a failure.  I mean, I got my first paying job, and I’m working at it about 38 hours a week, which is almost full-time.  Six months ago, I honestly did not think myself capable of that.  So that’s really huge.  That’s an accomplishment.  That’s an important milestone in my life.  I’m learning from it.

But I’m keeping up with my friends only barely, or not at all.  I’m short-tempered and irritable with my family most of the time.  I’m doing next to no writing at all—creative or journaling.  My relationship with God consists primarily of lots of guilt and frustration and not enough listening (all on my end); cracking open the Word and reading a chapter looms like a huge amount of work; taking twenty minutes to soak and pray feels like it would be just another opening for my overactive mind to be dangerously introspective, another foothold for the fear.  I feel like I have to distract my mind all the time, or else I literally begin to panic.

It’s been constant for weeks.  I can barely even talk about either the Turkey or Canada trip without my insides just clamping up with stress.

I know—I know—that letting God in is actually the solution.  I know that He shows Himself strong in our weakness.  I know that His grace is sufficient. But because I feel like all of this trouble is my fault—that I brought this all on myself by procrastinating—it’s that much harder to really trust that He’s going to come through.  I’ve had so many prophetic words about it this year—some of them from people who had no idea what I’m planning or what I’ve been feeling—and I can barely listen to them.  It’s incredibly painful, because right now looking grace in the face exacerbates all the shame I’m feeling about not being proactive for so long.

I think my problem is that I lack proper perspective.  Fear and shame = about me.  God showing Himself in my situation = not about me.

Why can’t I take hold of that?  Why can’t I just let Him in?