SENTINEL WATCH December 9, 2002 Issue

To break the grip of paralyzing fear

BY Channing Walker

YEARS ago, shortly after my sister began her first year of college, she was strolling carefree across campus with an acquaintance. Although she wasn't aware of it at first, she gradually realized that he was high on drugs. That carefree feeling ebbed away. She noticed they'd somehow wandered to a deserted part of the campus. Suddenly he attacked her and pinned her to the ground, clearly intending to rape her.

Physically, my sister was no match at all in this emergency. He was overpowering. She is somewhat petite. She tells me that, in the midst of that crisis, she thought how much she wanted her father there. Then, through the fear, she remembered her heavenly Father. And she prayed, "Father, help." Immediately she felt calm, and firmly said to her assailant, "Let me up." The insane, drug-induced glint left his eyes. He released her. She got up. That was the end of it.

I return to that memory at times when considering how to break paralyzing fear in moments of extreme vulnerability. Perhaps a single fear-dissolving, safety-assuring episode such as that one my sister had holds clues for us all—even when the threat is not from a single individual but from a far more widespread danger, such as the random violence of terrorism's vast, unseen networks.