Face Your Fears

Dear Friend,

Have you noticed, as you walk through your day, that suddenly you can smell something, see something, or hear something familiar, and it can take you, in your mind and heart, to another time? I like to call these “God moments.” These are special times.

Most often, we are at rest and not striving. These are the times that God can indeed speak to our open hearts.

For example, every summer, my family would take a trip to Kentucky to visit relatives. My grandmother had a big garden in the backyard of her home and was a true Southern cook. We would have green beans (cooked down) with new potatoes, fried creamed corn, and country ham, along with her wonderful homemade biscuits. All it takes for me to go back there in my mind is the smell of freshly cut green grass in the summertime.

Recently, as I was watching the Ellen DeGeneres talk show, I had another “suddenly” moment.

Ellen’s guest was a little girl named Emma, a gymnast who was only three years old. After watching her perform, Ellen asked her this question: “Do you get scared of falling ever, Emma?” Without any hesitation, Emma replied, “No, you just get back up!”

That statement, coming from this little girl, caught my attention.

The Bible talks about having the faith of a child and that “childlike faith” is what truly pleases God. It is not our grown-up faith. A child simply asks for what he or she wants and expects to have the request fulfilled. It is only after being told by someone that you cannot have what you asked for that you begin to doubt.

Obviously, Emma had been taught that all she needed to do was to get back up and begin again. Rather than being taught fear, she was told to just keep getting up and she would achieve her goal.

So often when we fail to achieve a goal or suffer a setback, we tend to take it into our hearts and begin to believe that we are not “good enough.” Instead of getting back up, we sit down out of fear, and the trusting faith that we had as children begins to disappear.

You see, it is a natural thing for a child to trust. Being untrusting is a learned emotion and is totally unnatural.

The truth is, God wants us to see ourselves as He sees us: totally loved, accepted, and adored, with nothing lacking and nothing missing. We simply must remember in our hearts that, thanks to this great love, we truly have nothing to fear.

Blessings, Pamela Dowling

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In addition to writing, Pamela Dowling is an entrepreneur, a visionary teacher, and a motivational speaker. She resides in Destin, Florida, along what is known as the beautiful Emerald Coast.