facing your fears

Ah, the age old question--what is your biggest fear? The harder part is figuring out the answer. Do I keep it short and sweet and almost superficial? Or do I open up to the person who asked a simple question and give this long-winded, vulnerable answer? I'm here to tell you that the answer actually doesn't matter--but whether or not you choose to overcome that fear does. I'm not gonna sit here in the middle of my university's dining hall and preach at you, facing your fears is extremely difficult. In fact, a lot of my own fears, I still haven't faced. I think that's why I chose to write about it, because I need to do this myself. It won't be easy, but I'm at a point in my life where I feel it is something I need to do. You may not be there, and that is okay, but I still encourage you to challenge yourself in any way you can.

Before I talk about facing my fears, I feel like I should talk about what I'm actually afraid of. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, about what I'm afraid of and why exactly I'm afraid of it. For starters, I'm afraid of sharks. I never go in the ocean when I'm at the beach, or I only go up to my calves. I'm always paranoid that a shark is going to appear out of nowhere and eat me. It's silly, I know! But it's the truth--I'm afraid of sharks. If you didn’t already know, considering I’m fairly open about it—I’m also kind of afraid of clowns. I don‘t know what it is about them, they just genuinely freak me out. I say kind of because I’m not so afraid anymore, and I’ll tell you why.

I have this theory that you just need to get up and do it. Get up and face your fear. Naturally, my thought was that if I watched movies with clowns, my fear would go away. Everyone told me I was crazy. However, my freshman year of college, I faced that fear. It was September of 2019, and I was terrified of clowns, along with the movie It. However, one night after a bible talk, my friends all decided to go to the movies and watch It: Chapter Two. I wasn’t going to go with them, but at the same time, I was upset because I didn’t want to miss out. After loads of “we’ll protect you” and “you have to face it sometime”, I decided to just rip off the band-aid. Yes, I went to see It: Chapter Two. In fact, I enjoyed it! I still haven’t seen the first one, but I will, now that I’ve faced that fear.

Here’s the thing—we are much stronger than we lead ourselves to believe. We are much stronger than our fears, yet we let the fear takeover. In 2 Timothy, it says that:

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.”

‭‭2 Timothy‬ ‭1:7‬ ‭NLT‬‬

If we are given a spirit of power, why are we held back by fear? I’m not here to be a hypocrite and say that facing your fears is easy, because it’s quite the opposite. That being said, we have the almighty, all powerful God on our side, so in reality, what do we have to be afraid of? This reminds me of a scripture in the book of Romans.

“If God is for us, who can ever be against us?”

Romans 8:31 NLT

It’s simple, really. Once we turn fear into faith, everything changes. Think about David and Goliath. I saw this on Instagram once, and I’ve never forgotten it—when David fought Goliath, he didn’t talk about how giant Goliath was, but he talked about how great God is. Once we start changing our fear into faith, that’s when we defeat the giant in our lives. Never forget that—if God is for me, who could ever be against me?

much love,

Carolyn <3