Lately I have been really thinking about fear. I know me pondering fear is frowned upon. But lately these incidents that are taking place everywhere have me facing things that I would rather have hidden away...far, far away.
Last night I woke up to make a bottle for my youngest daughter, now 9 months.While waiting for the water to warm I hopped on facebook via my phone just to pass the time. I was completely wrecked to learn of a fertilizer plant in Texas that had exploded taking out an apartment complex nearby and several homes. This story was not much different than the recent Boston story or several others happening across the globe but this one story sat to close to home for me. My husband works in a titanium plant and we live in a town very close to the same population as West ( although Redmond is much larger). I stayed awake for hours wondering why this story shook me and the others just glazed by me. I began to think of my husbands plant and how many fire's they have had in the ventilation system. Every one of them has had my heart in my throat. I cant bear the thought of my husband being in some type of situation like those in the fertilizer plant.
See, I have this fear of pain. Any kind of pain.
Whether it be physical pain, or emotional pain, I am afraid of pain.
Now as a Christian I know what I am saying is very taboo and before you go throwing deceleration scriptures at me, know that this realization is actually quite healthy for me.
When I was young, I remember seeing my mother cry herself to sleep every so often. She was madly in love with my father, they had four children together each about 2 years apart. While my mother was pregnant with my younger sister Rebecca, my father left. Now I love my dad and I have a wonderful relationship with him but him leaving devastated my mother. I never felt her pain, but it did filter in to different places of my life.
I have never lost anyone close to me.. I fear that if I did lose someone that I was truly close to, someone that I have opened my heart to that I might not recover.
I know that God never gives us more than we can handle, and I know several people that have faced loss and over come it and because of it they are stronger now than they ever were.
But even though they are stronger, they are also harder, more closed off.
I am an incredibly soft and very sensitive person, and honestly I just dont know what kind of person I would be if those soft places became hard, or those things that have made me who I am were now covered with emotions that were to raw to ever surface who I once was again.
I have seen what pain has done to people, and although God makes all things new I am afraid of becoming new.
I am living this life that I absolutely love! I have everything I honestly have ever wanted, I know that sounds so annoying and like I am stretching the truth or like I have a fake life that is secretly horrible behind doors. But I don't. Part of me is afraid of the other shoe dropping, or like I dont actually deserve to enjoy and live in this moment. I wouldn't change anything about my life and because of that I fear that everything I love I will lose and everything that feels safe will leave. I know it sounds stupid but it is because I know that a life not lived completely abandoned to Jesus isn't really a life worth living at all.
It honestly isn't totally easy for me to be this transparent, for all of you to know that I am a total scardy cat but in all honesty I completely am. But I also know that the God we serve is bigger than my fears. He is stronger than my greatest weakness, and his plans for me are good and not evil.
I know that Jesus died the way he did, leaving those he loved and allowed into his life, he died the worst death known to man so that I might be delivered from a place of fear. Although it is hard, it feels sometimes like I have to force myself to believe it but I really have nothing to fear, but fear itself. 
