How to Finally Quit Fearing

Write on “Dive” for 5 minutes…no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.

One of my dreams for you, my dear daughters, is that you dive–dive with abandon and joy and courage from whatever platform you may be standing on.  Not with baby steps to the end and a falling off, hoping that the jump doesn’t fail but a running from the start, no-second-guessing, free-falling dive.

I asked you to fly with me.  Literally, to take a little trip. 

You started with your baby steps.  “Do we really have to go?”  “It’s not like riding in a car! It’s in the air"!”  “What if the plane falls from the sky, mother?”  My heart fell.  Run, child, run!  No need to fear!  If you’d only let go, you would laugh with abandon and fly without fear. 

But baby steps and more baby steps.  Weeks and weeks of baby steps on the diving board and still no sign of that diving I dream for you.

I finally ask myself why I dive.  Why is it that I’m able to run from the back of the board and dive without fear?

Aha, the answer is always the same.

I assumed that she has learned that it’s always the same, but no, I need to remind her, no teach her, the answer—the key to learning to dive, or fly, as it were without fear.

“You do know, dear daughter, that the very worst case scenario is that we go get to meet Jesus?  That is the worst that can happen.”

She giggles because how funny that sounds.

“Yes, daughter, that’s what I mean.  If the worse case scenario is actually the best case scenario after all, you have no need to fear.”

And she gets it.  I can see it in her eyes she’s backing up from the baby steps, starting over at the beginning of the board and planning her run to the dive at the end.

It’s the same answer for all of us when we’re too afraid to dive isn’t it?

Jesus is waiting at the end of our worse-case scenario.  No matter what we’re asked to do, no matter how badly we fail or fall or hurt or even die, Jesus will be there waiting to meet us.