Fighting the Fear Freefall with Faith

Fear is a powerful emotion. Its potency lies not so much in the fact that it involves uncertainty about the future but that, if we are honest, it involves uncertainty about all of the future. It is the totality of fear that really drives us mad. Think about how much you could be fearing right now about your future. What if I lose my job? What if my spouse divorces me? What if my child dies? What if I get in a car accident? What if I lose my mind? This is what I call the fear freefall.

Logically, we know that everything that we fear cannot happen to us all at once. And that's at times precisely what scares us! Although we may do everything in our power and our control to keep our spouse happy or to keep an employer happy, perhaps our spouse dies in a tragedy or the business shuts down. As we all know, the most scary events in our lives are often ones that surprise us and what we least expected.

Fear has a funny way about getting us to live in a future, imaginary world. We lose sight of what is present before us in our Father's world because we are far-sighted. We keep looking for a danger down the road all while missing what God is calling us to in the present moment. Fear is also unreasonable. When we try to reason ourselves out of fear, it turns into obsessive compulsive behavior ("I might die in a car accident if I get on the highway"; compulsion: "I will avoid highways). When others try to reason us out of the fear, it often seems unsympathetic. When my wife touches me on the shoulder and says she hears someone outside the house at 2 am and she is scared and I grumble (through my sleep), "Don't be afraid", I am not really showing my concern for her fear. I am devaluing her fears because I haven't really expressed compassion and entered into her world. Perhaps I should wake up with her and reason and explain that we have never been burglarized before, that the area is a safe area, or that most criminals look for convenient crimes and don't want to break into homes that are securely locked, but all I have done is really tried to reason with her fear. And her fears cannot be reasoned with. Fear is sub-logical or, as Ed Welch says in his book Running Scared, it has its own logic to it. Fear says, "Well, I have never been burglarized or the victim of a violent crime before so it has to happen sooner or later, right?"

Additionally, while I protect my wife and children and like to think I can defend them adequately, ultimately it is the Lord who protects them. I cannot protect them from every robber, thief, or murderer. I cannot protect them from a car accident (no matter how careful I drive). I cannot protect them from an airplane crash. I cannot protect them from getting cancer. Jesus Christ does. Thus, here is the key to finding a landing spot in the freefall of fear: faith in a God who is both sovereign and caring. The great news of the gospel is that not only does God control everything that takes place in his universe but he also cares for all his children. While we may temporarily assuage our fears with rationalizations or other people, in the end we must go to the King of Kings who is powerful and loving to soothe our restless hearts.

The Cough

Underneath the "How I Saw Jesus" section of my journal this morning, I had written one cryptic word: "the cough." Every morning I make a list of the way Jesus reveals himself to me in the day and the things included range from the sacrifice a couple made in watching Kales, a conversation about Christ with a Muslim lady who brought coffee, and being distracted from an errand to help a fallen old lady to things like a sunset, laughter, and child. However, behind each of these items is a story that I could tell you about how I witnessed the person and presence of Christ in what would otherwise seem to be an ordinary, mundane daily event. Last evening, it was through a cough, specifically the cough of Karis, an action which for most of us is automatic and reflexive, that I saw Jesus.

It all began around 4:30 pm. Since Karis has been in the hospital for pneumonia, Katie has been taking the night shift and I have the day shift. Outside of the routine care that Karis requires and consultation with various medical staff, there is a lot of idle time of watching her rest. During these moments, I instinctively detatch myself from her to a certain degree because the weight of my own daughter suffering is overwhelming. Around 4:30 p.m. when Karis began to sound like she was drowning in her secretions, I re-entered reality. The full force of my daughter and her intense suffering overcame me and I wept for about two hours straight, alternating between tears and prayers for the Lord to grant her one simple thing: a cough. I won't provide a transcript of my prayers here but I will be transparent. They were filled with complaining and contending. They included expletives. I was hurting, grieving, frustrated and crying out.

I would like to share with you two of the prayers that I repeated before the Father in the name of the Son last night however. First, I continuously asked, "Why does she have to be broken Father? Why is my daughter disabled and suffering?" Almost immediately, in my dialogue before God, I had a response, "Karis is not the one who is broken. She is not the one who is disabled. You and Katie and are the ones who are broken and disabled. Karis is my Karis for you." I wept as I knew this to be true; Karis taught Katie and I more about God's grace than we ever could learn without her. Additionally, the notion of healing is included in the lexical range of Karis in the Greek. How does healing relate to grace? Healing is what grace does. In other words, healing is the activity of grace. God, through Karis' life, has brought healing to Katie and I by curing us of much of our sinful dispositions. As I wrote to Katie the other day, "God gave us Karis to make you sit and to make me serve. He gave us her to make you more of a Mary and me more of a Martha." God sovereignly brought Karis into the world so that he might display his transformative, healing grace to us by giving us a terminally ill child who is not under our control. In essence, both Katie and I are recovering control freaks. I control internally (as I posted about a few days ago through bailing from a situation through escapsim) and Katie externally (through busyness). God is answering the petition, "your kingdom come" by bringing the kingdom in the lives of Katie and I in molding us into restful servants.

Although the Lord's response of reminding me of my own brokenness and specifically my brokenness of withdrawing was penetrating, I continued to beg the Lord for him to make me the one in the hospital bed instead of Karis. I wanted to trade places with her so she could be completely healthy and I could die. Then, it was as if the Spirit was saying to me, "You can't trade places with her." My thoughts immediately went to Calvary and I saw Jesus on the cross taking my place as my substitute. In Karis' innocent suffering in that bed, I saw somewhat of a parallel. For clarification, Katie and I both recognize that Karis is guilty of original sin and counted as a sinner because Adam is her father. To our knowledge, however, she has never committed any actual sin (though we do not know her thoughts). Those theological caveats aside, even as a sinner, Karis is still innocent of this particular disease. There was no particular actual sin that she committed that brought this disease on her. Thus, in that way her suffering is innocent. And through the glimpse of my daughter's innocent suffering I caught a glimpse of the truly innocent suffering of the sinless Son of God who suffered in my place for my sin. I couldn't trade places with Karis because ultimately a greater healing than Karis' healing needs to take place in my heart and in Katie's and this healing can only come through the suffering of my daughter. Further, my next question of "Why my daughter" was halted by the Lord's immediate response of, "Why my Son?" I stood in awe.

At the end of this two hour vigil, Karis coughed. Twice. Two whooping coughs that she initiated all on her own. I wept tears of joy. I composed myself and called Katie to tell her the good news. She had just been praying on the phone with Anna Grantham for Karis to cough and as soon as I called Katie hung up with her friend and heard the news. She began to cry; I began to cry. Even our darkest darkness has its reprieve and Jesus never lets us ascend all the way to Golgotha because he ascended for us.