Fear is a liar

Fear has gripped me for most of my life. I didn’t even realize it when I was young, I didn’t put a name to it but now looking back I can see how much it had a hold of me.  As I grew up and got married at 20, fear really started to take a hold of my life more than ever before. Jim and I actually lost our first baby just 4 months after we were married. We got pregnant just one month after our honeymoon and we even got to see this precious baby and its heart beating on the ultrasound. We were young and naive and thought you got pregnant and then you had a baby. Little did we know it wouldn’t turn out that way for us.

We would go on to not only lose that sweet little one but 5 others as well. We not only had to go through 5 miscarriages and 1 infant loss of our daughter Annabelle BUT we had years of infertility between those losses. Oh the enemy LOVED those years I’m sure because he loved the fear that was growing in me. Fears that I would never be a mother. Fears that it was all my fault and I couldn’t give Jim a child. Fears because I couldn’t make our parents grandparents. Fears that I wasn’t good enough or strong enough. When we lost Annabelle, at 21 weeks along, the fears jumped up to a whole other level. I cannot even begin to describe to you all the fears that I faced during and after her loss. I would wake up Isaac every night just to make sure he was alive because I was so afraid of losing another child.  I had to face my fears head on about the life and death of Annabelle and that was the hardest thing I had to go through. I had so many fears over the fact that I kept beating myself up wondering if there was something else I could have done differently, that could have saved her. However, God wasn’t going to give up on me and I am so glad He didn’t. Through the grief I had after losing her, I began to pour my fears, my brokeness, my everything out to God. I worshipped Him through it and even though it was probably some of the ugliest looking and sounding worship times I’ve ever had….spiritually it was the most beautiful, deep, raw and intimate times of worship I had with my heavenly Father. Through my worship to Him and my time with Him, He slowly healed my heart and made me whole again.

He took my fears and replaced them with His love. Perfect love casts out fear! I felt that first hand.

Even after so much healing happened in my life after losing Annabelle, I still had fears and they still crept up on me every so often. We went on to build our family with 3 amazing and awesome little boys. So when God started showing Jim first about the plans He had for us, for moving our family to Haiti, you can guess what started to happen to me. FEAR! It was intense y’all. I remember just thinking, crying and feeling so fearful over the thought of moving our 3 boys to a third world country where there is so much violence and hardship. I let my fears get the best of me and for several months I would only think of the worst things that could happen and many other selfish thoughts of why we shouldn’t, couldn’t and wouldn’t 😉 move to Haiti. THANK YOU GOD for not giving up on me though. He knew He needed to go slowly with me and that He did, which I am so thankful for. Well through those months of Him working on my heart, He made it super clear what He was doing and helped get me to a point where I realized I HAD TO SURRENDER what what holding me back and that was MY FEARS. I had to give up my fear of not getting to see my family, my fear of my boys not having the same childhood they would have here in the states and all they would have to give up for that, my fear of having little to no medical help if the need arised while there, my fear of not having all my friendships anymore, my fear of travel, my fear of one of them being kidnapped and the big one, which was my fear of one or more of us dying over there. I spoke them out, I shared my heart, and guess what God did…He thankfully didn’t leave me there but He took those fears and He replaced them with HIS PEACE and excitement that can only come from Him. Y’all I cannot explain this better than to say that I feel it was a true miracle in my heart when He took my fears like that. I remember feeling my fears go away and ever since I’ve had peace and excitement over it all and I can’t quite explain it but I feel 100% God has confirmed and showed us this is what He wants us to do and so I just want to obey Him and I know that I don’t have to let those fears control me anymore because they come from the father of lies and since fear is a liar, I am going to speak the truth over them anytime they try to creep back up.

I remember thinking how I don’t want to get to the end of my life and have God say “Look April, this is all I could have done with your life IF you would not have given into FEAR.”.

So now when fear starts to creep in and I start to worry how we are going to raise the monthly support we need and all that needs to happen before we move…I remind myself that God’s got this, He’s called us to this and He knows the exact plan He has for getting us there and so we will trust Him and not give into fear because FEAR NOT, DO NOT FEAR or DO NOT BE AFRAID is the most frequent command given in the bible! How cool is that!

So friends, if FEAR is something you struggle with, first off, know you are not alone! Reach out to God and be real with Him, He can take it. Get in His word daily, post scriptures that will help you tackle your fears all around your house and your car. Pray specific prayers about it daily to Him. Put on your armor daily and remind yourself who you are in Christ and that He himself goes with you wherever you go so you have nothing to fear.

P.S. If you know me, you know my intense love of music so I want to leave you with a great song about Fear! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1srs1YoTVzs

Love, 

April