A Parish Catechist

“Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live.” Rumi

Too often, we make decisions based on fear. “I couldn’t possibly travel alone. How would I navigate the travel experience on my own?” “I couldn’t live alone as a single person. (Because…..).” “I couldn’t (fill in the blank).”

Okay, I cheated. The fears I listed above are fears that I don’t experience. I have my own list of fears – sometimes making decisions in reaction to those fears. In some ways, people view me as living a fearless life – I simply never learned how to have some of the fears that many people have. In some other aspects of my life, I don’t live fearfully because I was taught growing up to be pragmatic about living my life as I see fit – a good skill in the sense that I learned a healthy dose of independence (perhaps not enough interdependence and cooperation). In other ways, I am occasionally immobilized by aspects of life that don’t seem to phase other people. We are each living our own experience….

When we make decisions based on fear, we spend our time trapped in self-constructed prisons rather than fulling living.

God does not want us to live partial lives, self-restricted due to fear-imposed limitations. Jesus came “…That you may have life and live it to the full” (John 10:10). Making decisions based on fear is not being trustful in God, nor are we – by so doing – living the lives God wants for us. Not living the lives God wants for us is shortchanging the God who gave us life and the lives we are given. We are not truly being people of faith when we make decisions based on fear.

Really, one cannot be both faithful and allow fear to limit any aspect of our lives. We all have fears of one sort or another. A full and abundant life is one in which we live anyway, living without allowing fears to hold us back, allowing fear to define what we are going to do or how we are going to live…..Rumi: “Live where you fear to live.”

There is also the truism that perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). To the degree that we live in fear, fear is diminished to the degree that we learn to live in loving connections with God and the people in our lives. Not sure that there’s a correlative force between increased love and decreased levels of fear in our lives? On a macro scale, people living in war zones will be living in fear (not love). On an individual level, the same principle applies. Give it a try.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).