I just attended a Bible study on God being our comforter. We heard about fear and how it is such a natural response to trials and difficulty. How often I have let fear control my reaction to unforseeable events! How often I give it ground when my life begins to spiral downhill! Just because I cannot see the end result and feel lost, confused, or hopeless in any given situation I grab onto Fear who is always very near by.
What I have been learning through the past years is that God offers peace that is standing right beside us just as much as the flesh stands next to fear. We have the choice placed before us with each crisis and situation. We can grab hold of fear and allow it to swallow us up, or we can grab tight to God’s peace and be comforted in the midst. Grabbing onto fear is easy. It naturally grabs our hand in all of those circumstances. It takes hold of us and it is just natural that we would grasp it as the jolt of the unexpected hits us. It's hand is comfortable to us. But God’s peace is right beside us too. It holds out its hand as it is not one to force itself onto anybody. It simply offers us a place to grab tight to. The problem is that if our hands of our hearts are filled with the fear we are clinging to we have no place to grab tight to peace and he simply stands there waiting. Fear engulfs us if we are not careful. We get lost in it: making plans, “fixing” problems, and fretting, and worrying, and stressing. Our stomaches flip and hearts race. Soon enough we find that we are so blinded and trapped. We become unable to break free from the grip of fear on our own.
What happens if we choose to let go of the grip of fear in the beginning (The sooner the better)? The letting go is the hardest step. We need something to grasp and Man! fear is right there! But if we let go and choose to grab onto God’s peace instead we are wrapped in the comfort that only God can give us. It is a peace that floods over us. It does not make everything go away. It does not give us immunity from the trial or hardship. Instead, it gives us the strength of God to make it through whatever may lie ahead. It floods our soul with hope, love, and power. The comfort takes us to deliverance from the trial, through the trial, or because of the trial. Regardless of how we are delivered we can know that if we are relying on God’s peace and comfort we will be delivered to His perfect will for us if that mean victory through healing, through suffering, or even through death.
I stand at a crossroads each and every time God places or allows a trial to enter my life: I can forget the hand of God and try to work through it on my own before finally being forced to bend to the will of God or break, or I can make a tough first move and release my grip on fear and reach to grab the hand of peace offered to me relaxing in the comfort of my God and Savior. Why do I so often choose to attempt to find relief on my own allowing fear and the flesh to over-power me until I am broken even more when I finally give in to God and his will and plan? It is so foolish of me, and yet, I find myself down that road over and over again! How quickly I forget His promises!
I have a child with a disease. It is not a horrible illness as far as life expectancy and quality are concerned, but it is something he will battle his entire life. A four-year-old should not have to fight chronic pain, fatigue, arthritis and varying GI issues. He is going to begin school in the fall and each day it becomes more real to me and I allow fear to grab hold sometimes. I fear what might happen if he flares up while his dad and I are working and he is stuck at school where we cannot get there fast enough to rescue him. I fear what his classmates will say or think. I fear what he might feel the frist time he has an accident and has to go to the nurse’s office to get cleaned up and changed. I fear what he will do that first time he gets a teacher that doesn’t understand that when he has to go to the bathroom there is no waiting until another child returns or until the lesson is finished. I fear what will happen the first time he lashes out in a tantrum and no one understands what to do with him as he emotionally looses control and his senses seem to shut down. I fear it! I fear it A LOT! I want to give him the chance to go to school; to enjoy being like big brother. I want to give him the chance to be normal. But another part of me screams “KEEP HIM HOME! KEEP HIM SAFE!” Then I have to remember God’s peace. I have to hold onto that. I have to daily choose to let go of fear’s comfortable hand and grab tight to Peace! It is the only way comfort can truely flood my soul. It is the only way that God can have total control. What is a constant reminder to me is that my sweet son was named perfectly for this journey we never dreamed we would go on. His precious name means “God’s peace”. So every time I whisper his name as I hold him tight trying to comfort him in a moment of total meltdown, every time I yell at him to stop hitting his brothers, and every time I call his name to bring his focus back to me I am reminded that God’s peace is all that I need to get through it. God’s peace is all that he needs as he learns to manuver through this thing that is his life. God’s perfectly wonderful peace that surpasses all understanding will be with us wherever we go.
