Learning to Live Regardless of Fear

     Everybody is afraid, something out there scares everyone. Being afraid though doesn't mean that you're not courageous, it doesn't mean that you aren't brave, unless you let this fear stop you from living. We are not meant to spend our life fearing life, fearing mistakes, fearing failure, and letting that fear control our thoughts. Fear will always be there, it will always arise, whether its fear of heights or fear of an accident, there is always something to be afraid of.
     I'm personally afraid of lots of things; heights, spiders, snakes, wrecking my car (again), not having children, never moving away from the area I live in, moving away from the area, being alone, being in crowded places, and truly the list goes on! As you can see a couple of the fears are pretty common and truth be told silly, and others are kind of at odds with each other like I'm afraid of living my whole life where I live now because I'm miserable here, and so are most of the others who live around here, but I'm afraid to move away because I don't know what to expect in a new place. I'm afraid of being alone, but I don't enjoy a lot of people either.
     I used to focus a lot more on these fears, and some of the others I didn't mention. It got me really down, then I asked myself one day what it was I wanted in life, the answer to that was easy. I knew I wanted a family, I knew I wanted a better and ever improving relationship with God, I wanted a happy life for my family and myself  and I wanted to be a writer like I'd always dreamed.  Once I established what it was I wanted I asked myself  how I pictured  it, what does a happy, successful, faith filled life would look like. This part was harder for me, but really it went back to what I wanted out of life. Then I asked, how do I get to this point and what can I do right where I am to achieve this goal? After that I had one more question to ask myself, looking at the things I wrote down on what I called 'my action plan' I had to decide what things were important enough to me that the work to get there didn't matter even if it wasn't easy or I might not succeed.
    One of the best parts of learning how to live despite the fear I still feel sometimes, is the freedom I feel, living the life I wanted for myself makes me feel good. And because a big part of living the life I want is a better relationship with God it has changed me in ways I never imagined and made it easier to achieve some of these goals. The more I work on my relationship with Him, the easier it is to do things I need to; and the more I do, the less afraid I am. This is one of the many blessings of  serving God, the more you focus on Him and serving Him, the less time you have to focus on other things.
      I am still afraid of a lot, I just decided that life was more important than fear. I realized that my God was bigger than my fears, and everyday I am learning to trust Him more as He proves it to me over and over again.

Jeremiah 14:22

22 Do any of the worthless idols of the nations bring rain?

Do the skies themselves send down showers?

No, it is you, Lord our God.

Therefore our hope is in you,

for you are the one who does all this.