Faith over Fear

Chapter 1: Fortune and Faith

As a young child, I often woke up from a dead sleep in the late hours of the night terrified beyond reason – not of anything in particular, but of everything.

I would lay there shaking in my bed, alone, afraid to move, and almost too scared to breathe. It seemed as though I could almost feel the darkness swirling around me – as if the inky blackness of the night air was alive and closing in on me.

In the midst of that nightmarish terror, I knew that my only hope of peace lay at the other end of my family’s small home sound asleep in his own bed.

I knew that if I could gain just enough courage to jump out of my bed and run down the hallway, through the living room to my parent’s bedroom, my father would rescue me. He would wrap me in his arms, pull me close and whisper, Don’t be afraid, and somehow, as if by magic, my fears would fade.

So, grabbing my blanket to use as a makeshift shield against all the terrifying creatures of the night, I would gather what little courage I could muster, and run, as fast as I could run, through the ever thickening darkness to my father.

When I got to my father, he would gently pull me close and whisper in my ear, Don’t be afraid, and all my fears would fade away as if they never even existed – for a time, at least.

As I grew out of childhood, I eventually learned to sleep in my own bed at night, but the paralyzing fear that surfaced in the earliest years of my life never quite left me in peace. In fact, fear became a more powerful force in my life than I ever realized it could be.

The fear that had awakened me in the darkness of the night began to follow me through the light of day.

Worry became a constant companion, anxiety an unwanted friend who stuck closer than a brother, and panic the crazy uncle who dropped in on my life occasionally, unannounced, to leave a trail of chaos and despair in his wake.

Fear overwhelmed my life, and I feared that one day it would completely engulf me in its power.

Until, surprisingly enough, I found the peace that I so desperately needed in much the same place that I had found it as a young child – my Father’s embrace and whispered words of peace.

A Hope Filled Fortune

I was pregnant for the second time and though doctors had assured me that a second pregnancy wouldn’t be nearly as difficult as my first had been, my body was proving them wrong and causing me to be deathly ill in the process.

I was scared to death, and very literally terrified of death.

One night, in spite of my physical and spiritual discomfort, my pregnancy cravings called for Chinese food. The food didn’t satisfy my heart’s desire for comfort and peace, but something else I found that night did.

Packed up in the brown paper bag, alongside my General Tso’s chicken, was a fortune cookie. This was no ordinary fortune cookie. When I gently cracked it open and read the words inside, I knew – with more certainly than I had ever known it before in my life – that I had heard the voice of God.

The tiny slip of paper nestled in that fortune cookie read May my faith always exceed my fears – the price is too great to go through life afraid.

My very pregnant and extremely emotional state got the best of me as tears streamed down my face and into my plate of fried rice and spicy chicken. I was undeniably familiar with the too great price of going through life afraid. I had been living that truth for most of my life.

It was the first part of the statement, however, that really captured my attention.

I began to wonder why my faith wasn’t exceeding my fears.

Why was the faith in God that I had proclaimed since early childhood failing me in the area I needed it the most, and leaving me to pay the too great price of struggling through life in emotional and spiritual turmoil – afraid?

At that time in my life, I probably read proverbs from fortune cookies more often than I read my Bible – hence the need for God to speak to me in such as absurd manner, and immediately I knew that was at least part of the problem behind my failing faith.

Conviction embraced me and I began to wonder if, just maybe, the answers I knew I so desperately needed in my life could be found in the Word of God that lay collecting dust in the top drawer of my nightstand.

In perhaps the darkest season of my life, at the urging of an extra-ordinary fortune cookie, I cracked open my Bible with an anticipation born of a hope that I had nearly forgotten I possessed.

I don’t remember exactly what I found the first time I searched for insight into my seemingly powerless faith in scripture, but I do remember the comfort that came to me as I pored over the words of God that night, and the unexplainable peace that enveloped me like a warm embrace from my Heavenly Father.

It was that elusive peace and peculiar comfort that kept me running back toward the pages of scripture in the very midst of my spiritual turmoil from that moment forward.

It was there in quiet moments with God and His word that I began to feel my heavenly Father wrap His arms around me, pull me close, and whisper the very same sentiment my earthly father had whispered to me so many years before when I ran to him in the midst of my fears – Fear not.