The Biggie: Fear
Why is it that the older we get the more we experience fear creeping into our lives?
When I re-engaged in the aquatic sport of lap swimming after a 35-year lapse, I found that a new fear had crept into my life – diving. I am not talking about diving from a high dive, but merely diving off of the pool deck. I wasn’t really sure where this fear came from, since I never had a bad experience from diving during my childhood years. This new fear really bothered me as it made my world of swimming smaller than what I remembered from my childhood.
So one evening after practice during the summer of 2018, my coach helped me with overcoming my newly developed fear of diving. Standing with arms pointed out over the water, stretching and entering into the diving position, all while staring into the pool water, I quickly came back into the standing position very fearfully. Fear grappled me. As I looked over at coach, she gave me a reassuring look and said, “You can do this, Jennifer!” These encouraging words propelled me into the diving position again, glaring into the water. Then I took the plunge. As my body entered the water, I felt the biggest adrenaline rush I had ever experienced before in my life! It felt exhilarating! It was like a high! What was that? I had never experienced this before. I wanted to experience that again, so I quickly got out of the pool and dove again without hesitation. But, I did not have that same feeling again. What was that all about, I thought to myself. I kept getting out of the pool and diving in again and again. I was so dumbfounded and still thinking about how my body felt when entering the water after the first dive. I never knew at the time, but this would be a foreshadowing of what I would experience again in my life 3 years later.
Months leading to the summer of 2021, my Heavenly Father put such a deep passion within me that I felt like I was about to burst.
He wanted me to share how He helped me overcome shame in my life. The shame that had gotten a hold of me and controlled me for seven very long years no longer had its claws on me. He wanted me to get out of my cave and go out in the world and start helping people. So I created a website on which I shared my testimony and bragged about my Heavenly Father. The night my website went live was another adrenaline rush like the one I experienced the night of overcoming my fear of diving. This adrenaline rush was slightly different in that it wasn’t an exhilaration all over my body as it entered the pool water, but it was a giddy, pumped up, full of energy rush! Liberation felt amazing!
What have I learned from being liberated through these two fears? Overcoming fears expands our world. When our Heavenly Father gives us courage, whether it is through someone who cheers us on to bust through our fear or our Heavenly Father working within us physiologically to break past our fear, it gives us this giddy, childlike, supercharged, adrenaline rush! It is recognizing that we did not do it through our own efforts, but our Heavenly Father accomplished it through us– and that is something to celebrate! It makes our relationship with Him more real because He helped us do something that we thought would never be possible in our lives! Take the plunge and grow into a deeper relationship with our Heavenly Father by conquering one of your fears today!