On Fear and Freedom

I am stroking blonde strands on a tired head. She nuzzles into me in pink sheets covered with the faces of Rapunzel, Snow White, Belle and Aurora. It’s past her bedtime. She should already be asleep. But she’s flung herself across my lap. She’s sweet and quiet, and I am enjoying this moment.

My fingers run across something rough in her hair. What sticky mess is in your hair now, dear one? I pull at it. It’s stuck. Sticker? Candy?

 

I pull back the honey-gold hair curtain fully expecting to see something along the lines of a flower sticker from her Pretty Pink Doodle Purse. I am immediately jarred… I see a tick on her scalp. TICK!

A shriek escapes my throat before I can catch it. I missed the first rule of parenting under duress… keep calm so your child remains calm. My daughter caught my shriek and now she is gripped.

“What is it?” her shrill response from a face with eyes larger than the moon—panic-stricken.

I begin searching for calm, soothing words. I struggle to find them. “I need you to sit real still and don’t touch your head. It’s just a tick, baby. It startled me. It’s fine. I’ll get it.”

I call my husband who is out of town and doesn't answer. I call my mom who's not quite sure what to do. I call the advice nurse who looks up the proper removal technique and then leaves me alone to deal with the tick.

And I feel alone. Gripped. No one to do this thing I feel I can’t do on my own.

I pray. I muster courage. I grab tweezers and a plastic baggy. I take a deep breath (okay, 10 deep breaths). I grab that sucker and pull. I see the skin lift away from my daughter's skull as I tug. I keep pulling. She screams and jerks away. The tick would not let go.

I feel Helpless. Hopeless. Defeated. And Alone.

I do the only thing this girl knows to do when her husband, mom and the advice nurse can’t help. I cry. And then I pray. And then I call my mom again.

“You have to be brave, Amanda. You’re her mom. You might not like this part of your job. But you have to be brave. You can do this. You have to try again.”

My mom sings silly songs to my daughter and I try again. I pull. I muster all my strength against the anchor this foul creature has under my daughter’s skin. After the 5 seconds that feel like an hour, it releases.

It Releases. I Exhale.

My mom, my daughter, and I rejoice.

I place the tick in the plastic baggy, and with my daughter watching, I do what any homemaking momma would do to a nasty bug… I take a meat mallet to it.

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In my teen years I struggled with panic attacks. It got to the point where I had 2-3 a week. I experienced a supernatural touch from God when I was just shy of 18. I gave God my life, and He gave me freedom from anxiety.

Fast forward 10 years. I am pregnant with my son. I am in a crowded parking lot searching for a space so I can get to my 24 week check-up. I find a space about to be emptied. I wait. A car drives around me and tries to take the parking space for which I had been patiently waiting. When I attempt to assert my “dibs,” she tries to run into me. I peel away—angry, racked with panic—and hyper-ventilation immediately ensues (and then in classic pregnant woman fashion… I boo-hoo cry).

After that experience, I was fine… until I found myself in another crowded parking lot. I began to find myself more anxious than usual. I seemed to become over-wrought with worry over all the horrific things than could happen in my life or to my children. I stopped wanting to go shopping because of what the parking lot might look like. When one minor misunderstanding with a neighbor left me hyper-ventilating and gripped with fear, I realized it. I pulled back the curtain and saw the life-sucking parasite named fear anchored in me.

A tick finds its host by sensing body heat. A tick likes a furry host so it can gorge itself in privacy. Upon finding its victim, it cuts a small hole and inserts its hypestome (works just like an anchor). Its saliva produces an anticoagulant and an immune suppressor so the host’s natural healing and defense mechanisms against parasites can’t work. As it sucks blood, it simultaneously releases by-products (your digested blood) back into you, making them great disease distributors.

Fear is kind of like the tick. It looks for an unsuspecting victim. It sets itself upon us when we are too flustered to notice or care (maybe a car accident, a death, a tragic event…). It anchors down into us so that it isn’t until a similar situation comes up that we find it, and, by then, it has sunk down deep and will not easily let go. It manages to suppress our ability to heal from a distressing situation. Fear is isolating: it suppresses our Christian immune system of community. Fear will suck life and truth out of you and simultaneously release toxic ideas into you that skew the way you perceive life and God.

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I had began this post like 6 months ago, but for some reason I didn't think it was time to share it. And now, since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened, I can’t shake the knowing that I must share. I sense the fear in my own life. I want to add that tragedy to the list of reasons why I want to homeschool. I hear it from my friends, the horror, the weeping, the way they didn’t want to send their own children to school the next Monday. 

It is horrific.

And I make no offering of sense where there isn’t any. 

How?! And why?! And if God is good, and this is so evil, how could He let this happen? 

I see the way this tragic event like so many before it becomes like a blood sucking tick. The way it latches on during a tragedy, changes the way we behave, the way we perceive life and God. The way we become gripped with fear when we come face to face with the reality of how fleeting and precious life is and that evil does exist in the most awful of ways. The way we grasp for control and take away our trust in God.

Guns or no guns. Prayer in schools or not. Fear remains.

And life in fear is no freedom. In fact, fear is the opposite of freedom.

I do believe that there are two kinds of fear. One whose other name is wisdom. It recognizes we live in a fallen world and that accidents happen.  Wisdom is alert and active. It teaches her children things like not getting into cars with strangers and where to find peace in the midst of chaos. Wisdom points us to the Answer. It points us to God.

 

And then there is the fear that grips and distorts and replaces freedom with worry. It worries to send her children to school, it justifies her actions by what she is afraid of, and it imprisons her from the very life God intended her to have. It whispers promises of control. And fear is controlling. It is irrational. It sees problems as bigger and more present than they are. Fear isolates. Fear doubts God.

 

It is for freedom that you have been set free.  

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And how is it that one lives free from fear??

The first step is recognizing fear and its hold on one’s life. It’s searching like I searched my daughter’s scalp for the foreign object latched to her head, like I searched my life for what was causing anxiety attacks.

The Bible says, “Perfect Love casts out all fear.” Love is the tweezers that plucks fear out. The crux of the gospel isn’t found in you figuring out how to love God, it’s in embracing just how much God loves you. That’s the hard part. It’s trusting and believing that if God loves You, He won’t withhold anything from you, that He is good even when we can’t make sense of this life. And when you begin to catch a glimpse of God’s Love, fear cannot stand. We fear when we doubt God’s love, when we think He would take something away. Hope is what gives sight to what life could be, the freedom you were meant for, that fear is no way to live. Faith is the courage that causes you to grab your tweezers and pull and to keep pulling... and if necessary to still keep on pulling till fear releases its grip. Faith, Hope, and Love. And the greatest is Love.

Ann Voskamp says:

 All fear is but the notion that God’s love ends… Fear thinks God is finite and fear believes that there is never going to be enough… In [God] blessings never end because [His] love for you never ends. (from 1000 Gifts, 161)

Really, worry is just disbelief in God. And are we not believers? Should we not trust in spite of evil and unknowns?? Is this place even our home?

And these three things will remain:

Hope that God will set things right. Hope that we could live free in a broken world. Hope that this place is not our home.

Faith, a courageous action, that obeys and trusts God and takes Him at His word… no matter what this world looks like or how you might feel. Faith that is bigger than irrational worries.

And Love. Oh, lean into His love! Love that casts out fear. For He loves you and is so good.

It is time to get out the tweezers and pluck.

Perfect love casts out all fear.

And it is for freedom that you have been set free.

 

Maybe you would like to share? How has Friday's tragedy affected you? Have you found yourself afraid?

By Grace,

Amanda 

Credits: Information about ticks was found here on the Purdue University's entomology website.

Verses Used in the order that they appear: Galatians 5:1, 1 John 4:18, and 1 Corinthians 13:13