I don’t consider myself a person who is, as they say, made for fear. On the contrary, I have been very afraid for a long time. This feeling of uncertainty, that something could hurt me and that I am not in control, came and went. But over time, I learned to have a dialogue with my own fear. I realized that feeling fear is not only normal but also the most natural thing. dialogon is its ability to conjure up ghosts, because illusions bind us, and terror brings us to our knees.
I’m not in the habit of telling people “don’t be afraid.”
I have spoken to many people who have tried to overcome their fear, but this effort is absurd, because feelings do not affect a person. They come and go, whether we have them or not. That is why I encourage people to dare, even if they are afraid, instead of telling them to avoid being afraid. I have found that if we overcome our fear and do what we must do, we will discover that nothing happened, because what we were afraid of was only the product of our own minds, which will evaporate if we dare to act. If the thing we feared happens, we will dateover we have the strength to face and master it. And in both cases, we grow at the same time.
My experience on the path to God was largely determined by fear: that I would make a mistake, that I would not reach my goal, that I would not be convinced, that I would do something wrong… I had to fight with paralyzing fear again and again. Perhaps that is why I say that the condition for being able to walk through life is not to have fear. It is necessary to be able to walk on, even when we have it, just as it is important in life to not have problems, but to be able to deal with them.
When we name our fears, we can fight them.
On this long journey to overcome our doubts, the first step is to learn to name them. Fears are like illusions that have no body, and therefore cannot be fought. If we give them a name, we give them a body, and then we can fight them, because we know who is against us. These illusions often have names we hate, that humiliate us or make us ashamed. But that is the reality. We cannot pretend that we do not see what is right in front of us.
I am with you.
If we recall biblical characters or brush up on church history, it is clear to us that God takes us seriously. If we open ourselves to his will, he will not play with us. God asks of us, he offers us things we had no idea about, but he will not give us greater certainty than that proclaimed in Scripture: “Do not be afraid, I am with you.”
“What I like about you,” my spirit guide once told me, “is that you look like you’re walking on a flimsy wooden bridge like in those movies, holding on to the rope convulsively, testing each rung, screaming, ‘I’m so scared! I’m so scared!’ but you keep walking. And that’s what’s important.”
Don’t be afraid
