Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Love vs. Fear



Love vs. Fear

“I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.”
Oprah Winfrey
           
Over the summer I was driving in the car somewhere with the kids and I mentioned that I had some fear about something I had to do.  I can’t even remember now what I was afraid of, but I told the kids about it at the time.  Wren piped up from the backseat, “but mom, you’re not afraid of anything.”
I do remember being taken aback by the strength of conviction in her voice and the look of earnestness on her face when I glanced in the rear-view mirror.  She believed absolutely in what she was saying.  In her mind, I am not afraid of anything.  And how wrong she is.
Fear has been a theme throughout my life.  I grew up in a household that fed me a steady diet of it.  I was afraid of my mother’s mental instability from an early age.  I knew instinctively that something was off and that I needed to tread carefully.  My father was my ally when she was not around and he was sober, but he was seldom home without her and it was rare that I would catch him alone before cocktail hour.  And my brother filled me with fear of a whole different kind.
I feared confrontation and family strife and being myself and letting people down and being abandoned.  I could make an extensive list.  In fact, I did, when I wrote my fourth step.  I wrote for months and examined all facets of those fears and stared them down and turned them around and addressed them.
I can have confrontations now which I could not do before because of crippling fear.  I still don’t like confrontation, but I can have healthy anger now and won’t back down when I know something is wrong and I have a right to speak my mind.  I have a really close friend who jokes that rage is my sword because he has been on the receiving end of some of those confrontations himself.
I was afraid of becoming a mother once.  I looked at my own mom and was afraid I would repeat history.  I am not trying to bash my mother because she is ill, but because her illness was left unchecked where mine was not, damage was incurred.  I did not want to inflict pain on my children in the same vain.  I was afraid I would not know how to do it; to be maternal.  I can safely say that once Liam was born a switch flipped and it turns out I am more maternal than I could have guessed.
Recently, I have had a lot of fear.  A close friend of mine lost a family member in a tragedy and having to watch her hurting has been hard.  I feel powerless to relieve her pain and like I am flailing around for something to make it better.  I hate watching people I love suffer.
The same close friend who jokes that rage is my sword might also possibly be ill.  He isn’t sure and is waiting to see from a biopsy what the future holds.  This has me full of fear.  I’ve watched Liam struggle and Frank struggle and I don’t want to do it again.  There is a part of me that wants to run away and hide because watching people I love suffer feels like too much.  It makes me feel like I might break in half.
I won’t run though, because I won’t break and because what Wren sees now as fearlessness is simply that I am no longer paralyzed by fear.  I will just be vulnerable and full of love for my friends and family who need me because that is what I do best.  I plan to just be maternal and loving and “mom” at them. 
Maybe love is my sword.

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