Fear and Wonder
the simultaneous stories of my life
When I look back over the long sweeping narrative of my life, I see two stories being told simultaneously: a story of fear, and a story of wonder.
My earliest memories are of play. Playing in the garden, an exquisitely beautiful, sun-filled sanctuary that my father built with his love for God and his own two hands. Sitting in the lap of the ancient mulberry tree, dreaming up stories and adventures, my life was reaching up and out toward hope and promise. There were siblings and cats, friends and extended family that circled around me and made my home a happy one. I was allowed roomy space in my life to plan and imagine, to make up my own worlds, to put my ideas on papers stapled together into fat little booklets, which I actually believed were good enough to set up on a table in the front yard and try to sell to neighbors. I carried my bag of paper and pencils from place to place, documenting the world around me and my innermost thoughts through stories and journals and drawings.
I remember the stab of beauty, how a sunset could stir up a longing in me that was so intense it almost registered pain. How the wind made me breathless and the mighty voices of moving waters left me speechless. The ocean paralyzed me. I remember staring off into beauty with that dumbstruck wonder, an exhilarating, stunned sense of being more than a mortal body. I was made alive by the eternal breath of God. Made for a purpose, made for his glory. This is the first story of my life.
The second story begins in the evening, just as daylight is dimming into darkness. I was afraid. Every night, I was driven by terror into my parent’s bedroom, where I would lay out blankets on the floor by their bed and begin the series of mental gymnastics I practiced, trying to chase all of the disturbing thoughts from my mind. I was incapacitated, not by beauty, but by incessant fear.
I was afraid to go to school. I was afraid to go to bed. I was afraid that I would be kidnapped, that my parents would lose me, that I would be lost and alone. I was afraid that bad things would happen to the people I loved. I was afraid of drowning and fire, afraid of tornados, afraid of bad people.
I carried both my wonder and fear with me through my childhood and adolescence. I brought it into my relationships. Falling in love was ecstasy and terror. Fear nearly ended it. I realized I was paralyzed. Did I want to cower in the corner, living in shadows, too afraid to walk out into the beautiful light of day? Was I too afraid to see that love was standing right before me, and all I had to do was walk into it, day by day, season by season? That God was with me, and He would show me the way? This is when I began to stop allowing fear to tell me how my story should go. Marriage became a place, like a garden, where I could sit and rest, dream and hope.
Having children soon threw me back into old habits of terror. Seeing life with a child in mind makes all the beauty in the world more beautiful–the moon, the opening of a flower, the taste of honeysuckle... But it opens the darkness back up like a gaping wound. All the horrors, the heartaches, the unavoidable sorrows. Again and again, I have felt the loving nudge of God to open myself back up to having children, though it is a place where loss can be profound and where I must wrestle against the greatest fears that linger in my life.
I have seen that fear does not go away. It lurks about. There are seasons, for me, when the voice of fear is more subdued, and times when it rages. But I am learning to listen to the voice of God, which is perfect love that casts out fear. When I am afraid, I turn back to the first narrative of my life: wonder. I bring my eyes and my senses back to the things that are here, now. I get small, down on the ground, put my fingers in the earth. I look up at the sky through the maple leaves. I remember that I am part of something. I look into the eyes of these living children that have moved through my body. Their voices, the animation that makes them go, their breathtaking beauty. I thank God for a million details of his lovingkindness. I thank him for his never-ending faithfulness. That He never leaves or forsakes me. That He is mending this broken world and we are safe within His will. That the grace for every moment is contained within that moment, and it will be there waiting when I need it. In gratitude, I am more alive and less afraid.
I want to enter into the rest of my life tuned in to beauty and wonder, absolutely unmoved and untouched by fear. At the end of my story, I want to look back and tremble at what I would have missed if I had listened to that barren narration of my life. Truly, there is no time for fear. I am living out a story full of hope and wonder. I was made for the glory of God. I was made to hear his voice and to respond, and I have a beautiful, wonderful life to live.
Upcoming:
Final Round at Fender’s Alley: This Saturday, May 3, Rosie will be competing in the final round of the competition at Fender’s Alley in Cornelia. You can purchase tickets ($5 for a table of 4) here. Purchasing tickets in advance is recommended, as it is probably going to be a full house. We are rooting for Rosie! The winner gets a gig at Fender’s Alley and recording time in local studio. Show starts at 6:00.
Clarkesville Library Family Show: Our family will be performing as part of the Clarkesville Library Summer Reading Club on Thursday, June 5 at 11:00 a.m. This will be a really fun show with several of our children playing music with us. We will bring lots of instruments (guitar, piano, Irish whistle, violin, celtic harp, bamboo sax, melodica, percussion, bass guitar, to name a few…) and just do a wide variety of songs and styles of music. This is a family event, so bring everybody!
From the Family Archive:
A song I wrote when I was pregnant with Rosie, our first child. (Recorded two years later when I was hugely pregnant with our second, Paloma.) Baby Rosie makes a cameo appearance in this song.