Waking the Dead

If I had gotten around to posting my previous thoughts I probably would have written about my new thoughts on the Passion, after having watched it a second time, or about love. But the theme in my life the past few days has been quite the opposite: fear. Not fear like, 'what scares you most' but fear like 'what has the world done to your heart that keeps you from being the way God intended.' My roommate is reading this book called 'Waking the Dead' by John Eldredge: "The story of your life is the story of a long and brutal assault on your heart by the one who knows what you could be and fears it." Many days I feel that I could be something great but that something is holding me back from getting there. The more that I honestly face what fear is, the more I realize that my life is ruled by it. It's inevitable that a person's history must come into this discussion at some point, so let me just say that my life was very unstable growing up, I began to fear alot of things, and I was left to live in that fear without refuge or comfort or correction until my fears eventually disguised themselves as other things. So what am I talking about? Sometimes I'm afraid of getting sick when something important is coming up, sometimes I'm afraid of getting really sick at all, sometimes I'm afraid of peoples' reactions, what they think of me, what my boss thinks of me. I'm afraid of my car stalling in the middle of an intersection, or not having enough money when I get to the check-out at the grocery store. I'm afraid of being vulnerable, and of being forgotten. Mostly I'm afraid of writing songs, recording a cd, and having it end up in Value Village. Yesterday my friend said to me that if you sit on the talents God has given you without using them, you are not living for His glory. I don't want to not be living for the glory of God. But I don't know what to do with these fears that have defined how I live my life- how I express myself- how I survive. "Well formed love banishes all fear." So it's about love. For God so loved the world...