No Shame in Fear – Finding Courage To Live

There is no shame in fear! We are all afraid sometimes. The important thing is to not let fear cripple you from living your life. You don’t want to look back at life and realize you blew your chance to do something just because you were afraid. Do not let fear cheat you out of the best things in your life. You must figure out what you are afraid of, put a face on it. You can beat it, or better yet you can use it to your advantage!

The Window Incident

My family and I were Spain, my kids were 4 and 5 at the time. We were staying in an apartment on the 4^th floor. The windows opened to the street below. There was no air conditioning, we kept the windows open almost all the time. The kids had been playing in the room for a bit so I walked in to check on them to find them both sitting on the ledge of the window (they wanted to look at the people outside so they had pushed a table against the wall and climbed up), basically teetering on falling in or out!!! My heart stopped!! I calmly walked over to the window and was able to grab them both and pull them in. They had no idea they could have just fallen to their deaths!!! I still have flashbacks of that scene in my nightmares.

No Shame in Fear

If you didn’t figure it out from the story about, I’m afraid of heights, especially open air heights. It’s an irrational fear, I know it’s irrational. Many years ago I decided I would not let it have so much power over me. The mind is a funny thing, you know it’s irrational but you can keep your mind from drifting to them. I used to avoid staying on a high floor in a hotel with an outdoor balcony. The best city views are from the top floor, I force myself to ask for the top floor when reserving accommodations.

Let Courage Take Over

My fear does not really affect my travel much, I’m not afraid to fly (it’s enclosed, on the plane). I’m telling you, my fear of heights is specific, lol. When embarking on this journey, there were lots of things to be afraid of. We were afraid of leaving our comfy lives. What if our kids need us? What about our parents, will they be ok? We were afraid that things wouldn’t work out. Would we miss home, especially after being gone for this long? Here we were hopping onto a plane into the unknown. There is no shame in fear, you just need to find the courage to live. There is no template for what we are doing. We are making it up as we go along (with a bit of advance planning).

Open Doors

We have found that under all the fears we have had incredible opportunities. Many new doors have opened for us. God has provided so much for us. Grateful does not begin to describe our attitude for this journey. Finding your courage is a life changing decision that you will never regret. We are still playing it by ear but we are finding the courage each day to fight away fear and conquer every new day.

What about you? Is fear holding you back? What are you afraid of? Is it an irrational fear, have you acknowledged it’s irrational? It’s time to take control and dig down deep, find your courage. We are only here for a short time, don’t let fear consume your best days. Today is day one. There is no shame in fear but you can’t live there. Time to move forward.