Running Scared

Have you ever started a book that is so good and truthful you just didn't want to put down, but found that it is so intense you had to put it down? I bought the book "Running Scared", by Edward Welch, based on a review I read on someone's blog. And they were dead-on! It is a challenging, wonderful book. For I long time now, I have come to believe that anxiety and fear are the consequence of sin. Yet I have done nothing about it in my life. It seems I half-heartedly confess my sin and then jump right back into my old patterns. And my anxiety often makes me nasty and angry and impatient. It keeps me up at night and makes me jittery by day. I don't know where were to hide from it, or where to hide it away. It is definitely not a pet I wish to have by my side day by day, or even once in a while. I could try the excuse that I am just made this way, but I very much know better than that. By the time you are 55 years old, you are responsible for who you have become.
So yesterday I decided the time had come to begin reading this book by a Christian neuropsychologist (it is NO self-help book, though). He recommend reading a chapter a day, and only moving on when you have shared with someone what you have read. So today you are my guinea pig.
The book is so well written you feel like you are listening to a friend who has melodious beautiful way of expressing himself. Everything he says resonates, makes sense. He talks about the fact that no one has to teach us to be fearful and that our fears grow as we get older (darn! I thought age counted for SOMETHING besides wrinkles). "What was once a small family of worries quietly conducts an aggressive breeding program to become a teeming community of palpable fears and private anxieties" (p. 21). Oh so true, isn't it?
But then he really scared me (no pun intended), because he suggested I start listening to my fears to discover they have meaning, a personal meaning. I want to ignore my fears and make them go away. He suggests, however, that my fears will speak about what I most value and love. Aside from my fear of losing those I love (which is quite sizable), most of my other fears don't reveal very nice things about me. I guess I just have to face that I really am a dirty grubby sinner saved by grace and I am still on the very long journey of trusting God. So until I reach my destination, guess I live in the "world of fear".
So I will trudge along and try to bring my hidden fears and anxiety to the light because, as he says: "the more blessed you will be when you hear words of peace and comfort."(p. 28) I am ready for that blessing.