Welcome, Fear

Fear has taken me to some amazing places. It rode shotgun as I drove from Mississippi to Tennessee after graduate school, to take a job in a city where I knew no one. We made friends, advanced our career, and learned how to kayak.

Several years later, Fear sat in the seat next to me on the plane as I flew to Washington, D.C., without a job or a permanent place to live. I had long wanted to experience the “big city,” and although that dream necessitated scouring the classified ads for employment and living for a while in a women’s boarding house, Fear and I had a ball.
In the year 2000, Fear rose with me from the front pew of a Methodist church to deliver a eulogy at my father’s funeral. “You don’t have to do this,” my mother said to me before the service began. “Your father would understand.” But Fear knew I needed to speak, and so we found the words and combed our hair and tried not to look at the coffin.

At 41, I felt Fear slip itself, ever so slightly, into the toes of my satin mules as I walked down the aisle and into the arms of the  man I had loved from afar for some 20 years.
When I was in my early 40s, Fear looked over my shoulder as I completed the application for divinity school so that I might fulfill another dream. We sat through classes with much younger students, preached our first sermon, and learned words like “eschatology” and “exegesis.” We met Forgiveness and Heartache in the hallways, and came to know Grace firsthand.

Two years after I married, Fear helped me rearrange the guest bedroom when my stepdaughter’s mother died and she withdrew from college and moved in with her father and me. Fear and I took down oil paintings to make room for bulletin boards and sorority photographs on the walls. We wrapped Grandmother Lyles’ pillow shams in tissue paper and stored them in the cedar chest so that a hipper motif might adorn the antique wooden bed. Then we went downstairs and rearranged our hearts to make room for one more.

All of those experiences reaped benefits for me, through professional accomplishments, solid friendships, intellectual stimulation, cultural awareness, or personal growth. What those experiences have in common is that I was a little bit scared when embarking on all of them. Not “What was that noise?” or “Is there someone hiding in the dark alley?” kind of scared. More like a hyper-awareness that it would be worse for me if I did not run toward — instead of away from — whatever it was that frightened me, be it leaving home, mastering a new skill, or searching my soul.

These days, Fear packs itself between the pajamas and the toiletries in my suitcase for monthly trips to Mississippi to visit my 88-year-old mother. We dodge old folks on walkers as we make our way to Mother’s apartment in the retirement community where she lives. Fear pushes the doorbell, twice, because Mother really doesn’t like wearing her hearing aids. Some afternoons we go out for lunch and shopping. Other times we sit close to one another and wander through stacks of photographs and years of memories. Dead kinfolk are resurrected, if only for a few moments, and family lore is trotted out and embellished even further. Fear and I realize we are facing Mother’s aging, as well as our own mortality. So these are tender treks for us, these drives across I-40 and down I-55 and into our homeland. But we take them whenever we can, because Fear and I know we would miss too much if we stayed on our couch.

Over the years, I have come to accept that I am at my best when I’m slightly uneasy. Clear of my comfort zone, I am quicker to reach out to someone in need without regard for appropriateness or affordability. I am more likely to test a dream or challenge a prejudice. Before allowing my fear to morph into paranoia, I try to harness it toward hope.

According to Embracing Fear: How to Turn What Scares Us into Our Greatest Gift (HarperCollins), I think I’m heeding “the wise counsel of the healthy fear,” as opposed to clinging to the neuroses of “unhealthy fear.” In this book, Nashvillian Thom Rutledge does a great job of laying out what fear can do for — or to — you if you let it.
So I doubt you’ll ever hear me say, “I’m not afraid of anything.” Instead, at 48, I’ll simply try to be prepared the next time Fear comes calling, which I trust will be any day now. I don’t know where we might go, but I bet it will be amazing.