Safe and Secure: How to Have Peace When Fear Strikes

Jerusha: I’m giving away a paperback copy of Terri Blackstock’s suspense, If I Run, to one of you! Leave a comment below to enter the drawing!

A small mouse greeted me in the hallway. No, not a real mouse, but one of my cats’ stuffed toys.

I knew I better return the little plaid mouse to the living room where our dogs aren’t allowed before they saw it and decided it’d be fun to snack on a cat toy. I picked up the mouse by the tail and chucked it into the living room, my gaze tracking the landing.

It landed on my cat, interrupting her self-cleaning session as it bounced off her back. She jumped and landed with all four feet planted on the ground, her eyes big, ready for action.

But before I could even begin to apologize and make it up to her, she went back to cleaning herself. She sat in the same exact position as before the mouse had hit her, looking for all the world as if the incident had never occurred.

“Good thing it hit the feral cat,” I said to myself, shaking my head in amusement as I continued on my way. Then the irony of my statement hit me. When I said it, I guess I was thinking of the toughness and resilience she has, proven by her ability to survive as a feral cat.

But, often, that survival happens through a habit of constant fear and suspicion. In fact, the popular view of feral cats is that they can’t be acclimated and rehabilitated to indoor domestic life with humans because their fear-based survival behaviors are too ingrained and heightened for them to ever adapt.

I know from the experience with my former feral cat and others I’ve heard of, that feral cats not only adjust to indoor life, but can actually come to love it. Some, like my cat, can even turn out to be friendly, people-oriented felines who are more comfortable in social situations than other cats raised from birth in a home.

My formerly feral cat, whom I like to call the Warrior Princess, is in general braver and recovers much more quickly than my other, larger male cat. He’s no scaredy cat most of the time, but he’s much more cautious with strangers and certainly doesn’t recover from a fright in a matter of three seconds.

Then again, neither do I. So being the Fear Warrior that I am, I had to ask myself, how in the world does the Princess almost instantly let go of her fear when it strikes?

I’m sure her life outside, on her own, for those estimated three years was no picnic. She no doubt had to face danger at every turn, be on guard every moment, and she probably got hurt more than once. When we first caught her, she looked like a cat who lived by fear alone. Huge eyes and a fearful posture marked her usual response to anything that scared her, which was just about everything, especially people.

So I know her rapid shift from fear to peace that I observed the day I accidentally hit her with the mouse wasn’t due to a lack of frightening experiences. With a past like hers, I bet I’d be more afraid of danger, not less.

Yet, she’s taken those hard life experiences and responded to them as I should respond to my own fear. She’s used those experiences to make her stronger. By the grace of God, she survived and lived to enjoy another day.

By the grace of God, I’ve survived all my past frightening experiences, too. I need to use the memories of those situations to make me stronger, remembering that the God Who brought me through and used the experiences to make me better, will always do the same in my present and future.

When I thought back in my minds’ eye to the split-second before the Princess bounced from her frightened stance back to her relaxed cleaning posture, I noticed something else.

A choice.

She chose peace. She chose to let the fear go. She chose not to live in fear for longer than those few seconds. I think she could make that choice because she knows she’s safe now in my home with someone who loves her and will take care of her.

I can make the same choice. I can choose peace. I can choose to leave my fear behind as soon as it strikes. I can let it go or beat it back because I know I’m safe now with Someone Who loves me and will always take care of me.

That Someone is God, the Creator of the universe Who holds it together with a word of His power (Heb. 1:3). That Someone is Jesus, my Savior Who died for me and promises never to leave me or forsake me (Heb. 13:5). That Someone is my Father, who gives me eternal protection and a safe home in Himself.

The more I battle my fears, the more I love the hymn by Elisha A. Hoffman called, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” The lyrics speak so beautifully of the only place we can be “safe and secure from all alarms,” the place where we have nothing to “dread” or “fear,” and can instead taste “blessed peace.” Where is that place? In the “everlasting arms” of our God.

But don’t take a song’s word for it—rest on the truth of Scripture. For there we read,

The eternal God is your dwelling place,

    and underneath are the everlasting arms.

– Deuteronomy 33:27a

I want to choose to leave my fear behind, and with God as my home and His everlasting arms beneath me, I know I can.

Won’t you join me? Let’s do it, today. Choose peace. Fall into His arms.

How do you calm your fear once it starts? What do you do to remind yourself that God will take care of you? Please share!

In honor of the Warrior Princess and her refusal to run in fear, I’m giving away a paperback copy of the romantic suspense bestseller, If I Run! To enter the drawing, leave a comment below! (Winner randomly selected March 26, 2018; Winner must have continental U.S. address.)

Casey Cox’s DNA is all over the crime scene. There’s no use talking to police; they’ve failed her abysmally before. She has to flee before she’s arrested . . . or worse. The truth doesn’t matter anymore.

But what is the truth? That’s the question haunting Dylan Roberts, the war-weary veteran hired to find Casey. PTSD has marked him damaged goods, but bringing Casey back can redeem him. Though the crime scene seems to tell the whole story, details of the murder aren’t adding up.

Casey Cox doesn’t fit the profile of a killer. But are Dylan’s skewed perceptions keeping him from being objective? If she isn’t guilty, why did she run?

Unraveling her past and the evidence that condemns her will take more time than he has, but as Dylan’s damaged soul intersects with hers, he is faced with two choices: the girl who occupies his every thought is a psychopathic killer . . . or a selfless hero. And the truth could be the most deadly weapon yet.