Yours and Mine: Defeating the Fear that Comes with Loving Much

Jerusha: I’m so excited to have my friend, Kimberly Duffy, visit the FW Blog today! Kimberly is so much fun to be around and offers a rare combo of hilarious humor and deep thinking. Please join me in giving her a big Fear Warrior community welcome!

By Kimberly Duffy

Lord, protect my children. Protect my children. My children.

They are everything to us. A mixture of the best parts of mother and father, kissed by the divine. They are answers to prayer. Our chance to survive death. The opportunity to impact the world far greater than we could alone.

And every morning, when moms rise from bed, still exhausted because they were up half the night nursing babies and cleaning vomit off of toddlers and easing the fears of nightmares that seem too real…

And every evening, when dads tuck them in with stories of knights and queens and pirates and fairies, a kiss on the nose and tickled toes…

Parents pray that prayer. Lord, protect my children. Protect my children. My children.

In our sacrificial, and sometimes overwhelming, love, we forget they’re His children. We forget He loves them more than we can imagine. That He has a plan and a purpose for them. We reveal our lack of trust when we mutter these prayers—more a talisman and obsessive control tactic than display of confidence in the God who gifted them to us.

This was revealed to me in aching clarity one day this summer when my toddler ran away.

My fourth child—the only boy—surprised me.  Nicknamed Dennis the Menace (but really named August) by a family friend, my son is all whirling legs and sticky fingers and tousled blond hair that never lays straight. He’s the baby of the family, indulged by three older sisters and gifted with more energy and curiosity than any child ought to have.

He’s never met a lock, child restraint, or door he doesn’t take as a personal challenge. I’ve caught him climbing on counters to reach the knife block tucked away atop the refrigerator, sliding down the banister, his diaper-clad bottom bumping to the bottom step, and scurrying up a tilting tower of chairs and stools in his effort to bypass the baby gate.

I’ve always been an anxious kind of person. That anxiety grew to nearly unmanageable levels when I had children. And when I had a child whose sole purpose in life was to destroy my house and put himself in dangerous situations, I very nearly lost myself to it.

I organized and double-checked and fretted and worried and had fallbacks for every eventual outcome of every possible situation. I could never rest, never relax, because I couldn’t trust anyone but me to keep my children, specifically my son, safe.

Every time I wasn’t with them, I was afraid something bad would happen. Because who can provide safety like Mom?

In August, my husband and I attended a friend’s pool party. My kids were with their grandmother while we swam, drank wine, and talked with adults.

Then my mother called. Our two-year-old was gone. The door open.

Still dripping water, we dashed to our car and I urged my husband to drive fast. Faster.

Lord, protect my child. Protect my child. Protect him. Please. Please. Please.

The same prayer. Over and over during that thirty-minute drive home.

I’ve struggled with fear my entire life. At times, it’s choked out joy and peace. It’s overshadowed the good things in my life. It’s a malevolent thing that grew and darkened and suffocated. Until I was forced to face it. Shine light on it.

And in the midst of my darkest parenting moment, after I spent nearly an entire car ride entertaining accusatory whispers, I heard God’s promise. And it was louder than my fear.

I have August in hand. I love him. I love you.

That moment, we got a call from a crying police dispatcher who told us our son was found half a mile away, barefoot and inexplicably holding a party cup of water. Safe. Sound. Supremely angry his jaunt had been cut short.

After I’d gotten home, hugged my little boy, and made sure my mother hadn’t passed out from guilt, I recognized something—I didn’t really have a fear issue. I had a trust issue.

Did I trust in God’s love for me—and more than that, His love for my son?

Bad things happen. My son could have been lost or hurt. But, more often than not, good prevails.

I sometimes become so consumed by the what ifs and maybe thats, I forget there are promises. Peppered throughout the Bible, woven into histories and poetry and allegories, is the story of God’s faithfulness. His promise to keep us, to work things together for our good, to love us.

Since the day my toddler ran away, I’ve been loosening my stranglehold on the illusion of control. I’ve been making an effort to do things that before would have produced enormous anxiety. I’ve been praying Lord, protect this child. My child. Your child.

“Fear not!” is the most repeated phrase in the Bible. It seems clear God doesn’t want us to live our life afraid. Part of that, I think, is because fear doesn’t remain stagnant. You can’t give in to one fear and have it stay there, content to remain a random bit of anxiety over spiders or flying or losing a loved one.

The more credence you give your fear, the stronger it becomes.

And it spreads, eventually pushing out other things. Good things like time spent with family, laughter with friends, experiencing nature and travel.

When I think back on the minutes, hours, days of my life wasted on fear—fear that didn’t add a moment to my life, robbed me of peace, stole my sleep, produced tension—I’m grateful God has delivered me of it.

I can’t imagine living that life now that I realize I had been so focused on what it meant to be a mother with anxiety that I never thought about what it meant to have a Father Who is bigger than my greatest fear.

Do you have trouble trusting God with your loved ones or the things you love? Have you found ways to conquer that fear and worry? Please share!

Photos by rawpixel, Kevin Gent, and J W on Unsplash

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Kimberly Duffy spent the majority of her childhood reading and daydreaming about time travel. The internet makes both much easier. When she’s not homeschooling her four kids, lifting heavy things in the gym, or planning her next trip, she’s more than likely reading, writing, or researching.

She writes historical women’s fiction, always with a romantic element. Kim now lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, but she’ll always consider herself a New Yorker. She spends a lot of time working with various nonprofits and filling her small house with shoes and books.

Kim is represented by Rachelle Gardner of Books and Such Literary Management. Connect with Kim at her website or on Instagram and Facebook.