Facing Down Fear

When BSF met again I obviously had to share the news. I may have even sent out a mass email. I don’t really remember, that time feels like such a blur. Suffice it to say that as Share Day approached I had many of my group telling me I needed to get up there and share my story.

If I haven’t explained it before, Share Day happens on the last day of the BSF class year. It is for anyone who wants to get up on stage, in the sanctuary in front of everyone (this can mean hundreds of women), and share what they learned, ways that God has worked in their lives that year, anything along those lines. It is you and a microphone and lots of eyes staring at you. So anyone that knows me would know that this was a terrifying, virtually impossible thing for me to do. Growing up and even into adulthood I couldn’t order my own food, make a phone call or go out any where by myself. I had serious issues with jobs. Kinda hard to work when you are scared to talk to people and most places require you to answer phone calls. My life was extremely limited and I was quite a burden on my friends and family. So anyway, I was slowly coming out of that with my going to BSF and church, my husband was starting to wonder what happened to his wife, in a good way! God, it seems, wasn’t finished. No more baby steps. It was time to place a serious challenge in front of me. Was I willing to do something so difficult and terrifying to share my story and glorify Him?

So I began writing. I knew we were given about 2-3 minutes at the mic so I wrote out my story trying not to leave out anything major. Then I read it out loud while timing myself. Yes, this is how crazy I can be with planning things out. Wouldn’t want to have to face being told I’m running too long, gotta stick to that time limit. I am masterful at over-analyisis. I got it written out to my satisfaction and as the day loomed closer the feeling of anxiety built. You are allowed to take someone up with you for moral support, so you don’t feel so alone or isolated up there and a wonderful lady from my group offered to stand with me and I told her I’d most likely take her up on that. Always I have needed that crutch, that other person to lean on.

Share Day arrived and I got myself to the church, heart pounding in my chest. If you want to share they have you come up and sit in the front row and wait to be motioned up. I sat and watched and felt better seeing plenty of other women up there shaking and nervous, crying, reading from notes. I was frozen, I felt that fear and doubt creeping in. Then I could feel something else, like an almost imperceptible hand on my back pushing me to stand up and get in line. Then a voice, clear as can be, in my head says “You can do this and you can do this on your own. I am with you.” I felt myself rise up, I looked down the row and shook my head to indicate I was going alone, and I got myself up there in that line. No going back.

My turn came and I got up there on that stage and looked out at all those women, all looking at me and I told them that I was terrified with a nervous chuckle and I proceeded to tell my story. I think I pretty much held my paper up in front of my face, but I got it all out. I thanked the children’s leaders who had worked with my son and saw their beaming faces. When I confessed that I originally came there for free childcare the room filled with warm laughter. When I told of my Good Friday prayer being answered there were audible gasps. It was frightening and also the most freeing thing I had ever done. Those 2-3 minutes up there laying bare my weaknesses and telling of God’s triumphs are minutes I will treasure, always. The fact that I did it alone made it mean so much more, but I wasn’t really alone. I could feel His holy presence at my back, supporting me, encouraging me, and loving me.

-I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. –Philippians 4:13

A Prayer Most Definitely Answered!

On a weekend where I had been particularly upset about the financial issues and school worries regarding our new home our pastor said this, “You are in the house you are in, the neighborhood, the community, the town you are in, because that is where God wants you to be. You have a purpose there.” Wow, what a slap in the face! I had a lot of these moments on Sundays!

I also began truly praying for the first time. I realized I really didn’t know how to pray. I used to just ask God for stuff and be disappointed when I didn’t get it. Selfish, meaningless stuff mostly. Now I learned to give thanks first, to express my love for Him first, then ask for guidance or help rather than ask for divine intervention. We had been trying to contact the sellers for a while in the hopes they would pay the amount owed on the taxes. Letters went unanswered. We were looking at the possibility of having to take them to court. I began praying that God would work in their hearts and encourage them to do the right thing and to cover what they were responsible for. A month would go by and I’d send another letter. Finally, I sent a letter in March telling them that they needed to respond in some way within 30 days or we would be hiring an attorney and moving forward. It was the week before Easter and they had about 10 days left so I started to go ahead and research attorneys so that I would have everything lined up when that last day passed with no contact. My church was planning a Good Friday service that would be done online so that everyone could participate from their homes. We were all to have some bread and juice available to take Communion during the service.

Good Friday rolled around and my husband was going to be out as a good friend had passed away that week and all of the old school buddies were getting together to figure out arrangements and reminisce. I was lying in bed with our son, he needed me to stay until he was asleep, and while I laid there I prayed for guidance on handling the hiring of an attorney and wisdom to make the right choices. After our son was asleep I gathered my bread and juice and set myself up at my computer to watch the service. I was feeling particularly emotional, reflecting on Jesus’ sacrifice and God’s immense love that He would send His Son for us. I had never felt quite so full to bursting with the gravity of it before. I cried as we thanked Jesus in our Communion prayer. As soon as I had eaten the bread and taken the juice my phone went off with a text message. When I looked at it I was in shock. It was the sellers and they were letting us know they were getting our payment together and would be in touch soon. Let’s just say I lost it. I had goosebumps. If I ever had a doubt in the power of prayer it was completely obliterated in that moment. I just bawled and looked up and thanked Jesus with all my heart. I called my husband, I called my parents. There was a presence with me that night, all alone in my office; that was indescribable.

-This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. -1 John 5:14

When Things Got Real Part 2

About a month after starting BSF we sold our house and moved. It was a crazy, hectic, frustrating experience. We had a buyer for our house very quickly but finding a new house proved to be quite a chore. We looked at a lot of houses and had a list of our favorites in order of liking. Every time we found a house we liked well enough to live in something would happen. Our offer would get accepted and then cancelled for a better one, we had one house where the owner chose an offer of less money than we were offering, one house our realtor sat on the offer until the next day (in a very busy market) and someone else snatched it up first. We even made an offer on a house that had been on the market for months with no offers, had dropped the price significantly, and even the neighbor had come during our walk through to ask us to please buy the house. Mysteriously, as soon as our offer was submitted it went under contract with someone else. The next one on our list dropped off the market before our offer could be sent in. So we ended up with only one house left on our list and a looming close date on our current house.

It was smaller than we wanted. Not in the school district I thought I wanted but it was at least assigned to a good elementary school, we could always move before high school. It was all we had left. Not much else was popping onto the market at the time and we didn’t want to be homeless. We offered and it was accepted. I couldn’t help but feel like we were led there, that all of these slamming doors were funneling us to this particular house for some weird reason. We finally had our new home.

We weren’t in our new home long before some less than great things came to light. Our lender calculated our taxes and escrow wrong by a long shot meaning, first of all, that the people we bought the house from did not pay in the correct amount to cover their portion of property taxes for the time they were in the house that year. Since we closed in October it was a good part of the year they owed for. We were told it was up to us to collect what they owed, meanwhile it came out of our escrow and left our account very much in the red. At about the same time, I found out that the school that we were so happy that our son would go to could possibly fill up and if so, our neighborhood would get bumped and re-assigned. The elementary he would be re-assigned to was very poorly rated and I was not happy one bit. We started having serious doubts about our choice to move here.

During this time, my son and I continued to attend BSF. I was feeling really down and stressed. Lots of worry and doubt clouded my mind almost constantly. The holidays were coming up and I was looking for a way to put my worries aside and enjoy Christmas in our new home. It was about this time that I was feeling a push to explore attending church for the first time. I had gotten a flyer in the mail for a church that was very convenient to our house, only about 2 miles away, but I was still really nervous about stepping out on my own. I had never been to a Christmas Eve service before and I thought I’d like to check it out. I wasn’t having any luck convincing anyone to go with me though. Then I mentioned it to my sister-in-law, the same one who got me to try BSF, and she said they were actually planning to go to one. It just so happened to be at the church I was considering looking into. They just so happened to attend there. So they invited me along. I truly believe that there are no coincidences and God had worked through my sister-in-law once again because I very much enjoyed that service and I don’t know if I would have gone if I hadn’t been invited to go. Soon after I expressed to her that I wanted to begin going regularly and we worked out a weekend to go together so I didn’t have to feel like I was all alone in getting my son set up at the children’s program, in this new place full of strangers. That one Sunday was all I needed. We have attended regularly even though my brother’s family hasn’t been there since. It became my church home from the first sermon.

So many things that our pastor talked about hit me so hard. I did a lot of crying on those Sundays. The very first message I heard asked the question “Are you a disconnected believer or a connected disciple?” I realized the description of a “disconnected believer” was me, without a doubt. Disconnected believers were irrelevant to the Kingdom of God. I didn’t want to be irrelevant to the Kingdom! I began to absorb these teachings and could feel a definite change in how I thought and lived. Much less about me, I was so much more willing to put myself aside for others. 

-Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take. Proverbs 3:5-6


If anyone is interested in watching that first message that hit me so hard you can find it here:Hope Fellowship - Pruning

When Things Got Real! Part 1

I wrote this section down right after it all happened. Been about a year to a year and a half since this was written.
Bible Study Fellowship circa 2014

Here we fast forward to about a year ago. I have married my best friend and we have a toddler son. I’m a stay at home mom and extreme introvert still but I knew I didn’t want my son to have the same social problems I had. I was searching for a way to get him around other kids but we didn’t have the extra cash for him to go to a preschool yet. At this point he is around two and a half and has had little interaction with other children. My sister in law posted on Facebook about something she was involved in called Bible Study Fellowship and she used these magic words “free childcare”. Usually I would totally avoid going to a new place full of new people but motherhood had definitely changed me somewhat and I decided I needed to suck it up and do this for my son. At least my sister in law was going to be there. So we went and signed up.

I was very self conscious. I felt like as soon as I walked in everyone would have me pegged as a fraud. I didn’t attend church and I figured it would be glaringly obvious. I also expected to be looked down upon, to be an outsider like I’d always been. For the sake of my son I pushed these fears aside and pressed on. I was scared to death but for the first time had the strength to get past it and step outside of my box. 

(I was still so blind to where this new strength was coming from)

It was after only the first week of class that I learned my sister in law had to drop out due to time constraints. I was committed though and chose to not back out. It took a few weeks of once a week classes for our son to not cry every time I left him. He quickly adapted with the help of his wonderful teachers and soon began to excitedly look forward to going to “school”. There was a real, positive change in him. There were changes happening in me as well.

I figured I’d sit in my group and keep my mouth shut. Do my work and try to not be noticed. Instead I actually felt compelled to start participating and sharing. It was very much out of character for me. The more I shared the more I felt at ease and I started to realize that no one there was judging me or laughing at me. These women didn’t act superior. They had their own problems and insecurities as well. They were real. We were each just on different parts of our journeys. I started to feel like I was a part of something. I started to feel something foreign, an actual sense of belonging. This was only made even more apparent to me when I decided to come clean and tell my group why I started coming.

“I confess that I only started coming here because I was told there was free childcare. I thought it was only for my son and not for me. I have come to realize it has been for me too. I feel like such a fraud.”

This confession was not met with annoyance or condemnation. There were smiles and gentle laughter and one soft spoken woman about my age responded with “We are all frauds.” 

I was slowly finding my home.

                -When Jesus heard this, he told them, "Healthy people don't need a doctor--sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners." Mark 2:17

A Little Introduction Part 2

I woke up but did I truly “wake up”? I’d say my faith in God greatly increased but I still had quite a thick veil over my eyes. I went on as usual, letting my fears rule my life, avoiding anything I found uncomfortable or anxiety inducing. Scoffing at the idea of going to church, having some man tell me what I should believe, how I should believe, while sitting by a bunch of holier than thou hypocrites.

No thank you.

I went on about life, living as I thought I should. Not realizing that I was actually a selfish, uncompassionate, liar a lot of the time. In 1999 I kept having this weird feeling like I had a hole that couldn’t be filled. I didn’t really know what it meant but shortly thereafter I ran across an article regarding baptism and I thought, “There! That’s what I need! I need to be saved.”

 (I know better now so stick with me)

Now being a person totally afraid of doing things in public and also with a hefty fear of water I searched for the best way to get this baptism thing done without experiencing any discomfort. Allow me to explain a bit more. Neither of my parents swim well and it was instilled in me early that water can kill you. This translated in my anxiety ridden mind into a serious fear of water touching my face or going over my head to the point that I will have a panic response to these things. I can’t even stand getting water on my face in the shower.

So back to the baptism; I chose to be baptized Methodist. They only do the sprinkle of water and we knew a Methodist pastor already who was agreeable to doing a private ceremony with only my parents and his wife as witnesses. And so it was that I filled that hole and was saved…right? I thought so anyway.

And life moved on the same as always.

                -If the Good News we preach is hidden behind a veil, it is hidden only from those who are perishing.- 2 Corinthians 4:3