Fighting fear
Fighting the fear? Ha ha ha ha. How in the world do you do that? As I read the Word, I see the text, but the commands seem unrealistic. “Oh, it’s easy, just have perfect love,” John (basically) said:
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
1 JOHN 4:18
WHAT THE… JOHN!
Ok, so, he didn’t say anything about “easy” and it’s a given that I haven’t been perfected. Sooo…. What now?
It’s a struggle. The first step: I have to remember to look for relief from fear. God has given us so many tools for overcoming it, but the hardest part is to remember to look. For me the actions feel a bit like having to write a pledge on the chalkboard a million times. “I will trust and have perfect love for you Jesus! I will trust and have perfect love for you Jesus!” Repeat 100x… But the second I walk away from the figurative chalk board, I’m thrown face first into fear and let it consume me, slowly, till all of a sudden my shoulders are by my ears and I’m snapping at my kids.
The enemy is cunning. The mind is weak. Every minute I find myself having to fight to have power over fear, now during the Coronavirus more than ever. What am I fearing? It doesn’t matter because there’s endless supply of things to fear. If I overcome one thought, another evil one is ready to sneak in.
My solution (which I’m still struggling with) is to do things like read quotes, listen to music, read through my Lessons, anything to put a new, positive thought in my brain. Ultimately, it’s about training the mind. Reading my kids “Jesus Always” book is always amazing. It’s uncanny how every entry seems perfect for that day.
You could place sticky notes around your house. Set your phone timer with a label to remember to pray. Find the triggers to snap your mind out of it. It takes doing those small things over and over and over again. As much as it takes. It might never end. But you have the power to get your mind out of the enemy’s hands. Think of it as a quest. You are a soldier of the Lord fighting the enemy who has invaded your mind! Onward Christian soldier!!! You can defeat the enemy called fear!!!
The best guideline to fight fear is to focus on love. How do you do that? Bring to mind what you are blessed with right now and decide to do something that helps bring you joy or love. Write a reminder on your arm if you have to. Take action, even if it means just trying to do something normal like baking brownies, to find the small joys and focus on blessings.
C.S. Lewis is a tried and true resource when it comes to looking for wisdom. I love this excerpt where he’s addressing war, fear, and the mind. It seems very applicable to our situation with COVID-19, although right now chatting over a beer has to be done via video. Darts will have to wait.
If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
C. S. Lewis, ‘On Living in an Atomic Age’ (1948) excerpt
How do you fight fear?