When Fear Wins

Fear is powerful. Of all the emotions we feel I really believe that fear is near, if not at, the top of the list of the most influential emotions. It achieves its power not just through brute force, but also through constant presence. Fear wears us down until we give up and give in. It influences our decision making and it affects us in ways so deep that we don’t even recognize.

Of course this power that fear has is not something we desire or hope for or praise. We know that fear is harmful. We’ve seen dictators use it to oppress nations. We’ve seen church leaders use it to scare people into Christianity. We’ve seen parents use it on children to command their obedience.

Despite all the large scale or obvious negative effects we see come from fear, we still allow it to rule our own minds and lives on a regular basis.

Think about your friendships and romantic relationships. Why do you get clingy or put up walls in these relationships? For fear of being left, rejected, and alone. Think about your job or education. Why don’t you take another job, a promotion, or pursue the education you want? For fear of failure and the unknown. Think about your mental health. Why don’t you start counseling sessions? For fear of being judged, reliving trauma, or being told that you’re broken beyond repair.

{Oh, did I say all those fears out loud? Whoops, those were just my own!}

The thing about fear is, it draws its power and demands our submission by threatening what we value and love. Our comfort, our dreams, our future, our money, our home, our security, our salvation, our people. It’s hard not to submit to fear when these things are threatened. Nobody wants to lose, or risk losing, what’s important.

In fact, we only experience real fear when something important is involved. If we hate, or are indifferent to, something and we lose it, there’s no fear there. To love something means there will always simultaneously be the fear that we might lose that thing.

I recently finished a book that has a great example of the power of fear. In Sign Here (by Claudia Lux), Silas and Lily have been married for about 15 years. Back when they were dating, Silas tragically lost two people close to him: his brother and a friend named Sarah. He carried this grief by himself their whole marriage and it deteriorated to a point where they were more roommates than spouses. Lily began to have an affair because, for the last 15 years, she felt that Silas loved the people he lost more than he ever loved her. The book reads:

“Silas never once faltered in his love for his wife. It wasn’t that he chose someone gone over her, as she seemed to believe. It was that after Sarah died, followed immediately and even more devastatingly by his brother, all he could think about each time he looked at Lily was how much it would hurt when inevitably she, by either choice or design, also left. And slowly, his future grief corroded his present love like cancer, until looking at her felt the same as losing her.”

Silas loved his wife deeply. He loved her so much that he also deeply feared the thought of losing her one day. The THOUGHT of losing her! This was not even a predestined outcome. But he allowed himself to sit in this thought, in this future grief, for their entire marriage. He allowed fear to win, and it destroyed his life and his marriage. “His future grief corroded his present love”. Such a powerful, eye-opening line.

Some of us live through some of these same scenarios of fear. The fear of a negative outcome causes us to live in that possible, future moment rather than in the reality of our present. We miss all the good right in front of us because of a “what if?”. We let fear win.

“What if this marriage ends in divorce? What if I go through major trauma? What if the government collapses? What if there’s a Hitler 2.0 soon?” Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for being cautious, being prepared for life, and planning what we can. But do you see how just the thought of bad things can quickly become overwhelming and consume us?

The more that fear consumes us, the less often we can focus on joy, beauty, love and all the good things that presently surround us. But we can’t just pray away fear forever. As long as we’re on this earth, fear will always threaten the things we love.

I want you to let go of the idea that you have to rid yourself of fear. Focus instead on your response to fear. Will you let it control you? Will you allow it to consume your thoughts and deteriorate your life? Or will you choose to understand that fear is only an emotion. It has no definitive say in the outcome of any situation.

Fear is a scared feeling, a negative thought, a concerned future, but it is not in control.

-Stephanie Lauren Auman