Does Fear Hold You?

There is a book out called What Women Fear. I have only seen the cover of the book but I am itching to pull it back and digest words.

I follow a blog by Angie Smith, the writer of the above mentioned book. She is a talented writer. She also lends her talent to a little site, (in)courage, where faith is shared and doubled.

Bloom Book Club is a part of (in)courage, and they are doing a study of What Women Fear. On (in)courage, Angie made a little request to blog about ones fears.

That's hard to do. I sat before the keyboard ready to pour out fears. A few times I did this without a single key being struck. I couldn't do it. It is hard to peel back that protective layer even to ones self.

There is something so scary about, well...pulling the covers back on your fears. It makes you feel exposed, transparent, vulnerable.

Deep breath in. Lungs inflate. Here I go.

I have never had one solid, steady fear in my life. As my life has changed with the twists and turns, so have my fears.

When I was younger, a school girl, my fear was that I wouldn't be accepted. That I would be rejected. That I wouldn't be liked for me.

Those two fears were my companions for many years.

During my engagement and the planning of promise, my fear was that my Dad would not be present. I was fearful that I would not have his arm to link with mine and walk me down the aisle to my future.

With my abdomen swollen with life and future the first time, I was scared that my husband's life would come to end before he witnessed new life.

That same fear crept back in with the second swelling of life. Two lives.

During that time, I never imagined that I would not see those two lives live before me. Before us.

I have been like many. Knowing, even has a child, that I would one day live in this world without my grandparents, without my parents and possibly without my spouse. I never imagined, thought, that I would live life without my children.

I always, innocently believed, that my children would bury me. Not the other way around.

Some have spoken that they know what my fear is now. They whisper on their lips that I must cling tighter to my living daughter due to my fear of losing her as well. I nod when this is placed in the space between.

I nod but it is not true. I nod because I think that is what they want to hear. I nod because I don't want others to think ill of me.

I nod but it is not true.

I don't want to lose my living daughter. I don't want to have to bury her too.

I don't want to lose my living daughter but it is not a fear that consumes me.

Since I have handed Emmerson and Vivienne back to the Lord, I have become someone I no longer recognize. I look in the mirror and I see someone who has aged. The reflection that stares back is someone who has lived a lifetime in 32 years of the heart beating.

There has never before in my life been such a distinct Before and After as there is now.

Before I was energetic, silly, motivated, smiling and laughing through life. I was eager for the future. I loved to teach my daughter all in life that was still so new to her. I was delighted.

After all of this, I am a place in the space. I sit. I go through the motions. I have no energy. It is used to just be.

When the darkness sweeps in, it becomes too black to see. What once was rationale has now become senseless. And what is senseless? Well, that just seems to be the missing link.

There are moments when I don't want to be taking up any more space in this place. I want the sharp, shearing pain to end.

This is pain. This is grief. This is what is ugly.

How do I function in a world where my babies are not present? How can I be expected to live when the heart is too heavy to squeeze?

So my fear now?

That my daughter will never know the silly, lets-have-fun, I-just-want-to-make-you-smile, make-you-laugh-mom I used to be.

That my husband will look in the eyes where the light has gone out and miss his wife.

It is this, that my grief, my hurt will overwhelm me and then become me.

Stephanie