Article January 7, 2002 Issue

Fear—a mask you can remove

By Brian Clendenen

If you have ever been afraid, you know how pervasive and debilitating the feeling can be. You can be afraid of just about anything: spiders, snakes, dogs, getting old, terrorism, feeling alone, illness, losing a job, losing a loved one—the list goes on. In extreme cases, you can actually find yourself unable to move, to speak, or to think clearly.

Sometimes fear seems too powerful to overcome. But I learned to eliminate it by focusing on God's love and care for me and everybody. Fear works sort of like a swindler or a con artist. It tries to convince us that God is unwilling or unable to protect us or help us. Truthfully, though, we're never outside of God's love—His care and protection.

There was a time when I thought that living with gripping fear was normal, and that I'd never learn to control it. I believed fear was a life sentence that at best ebbed and flowed, allowing relief for only short periods of time, if at all. Before I learned to pray about fear, I lived each day with an oppressive feeling that I would never be able to give up alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. I was so afraid so much of the time that suicide appeared to be the only way out. But I came to realize that fear is really like a mask that you can remove, rather than a deep well that we can't hope to escape from.