Deleanor (Delano+Eleanor)

I like both of those people. 

FDR. And his wife, Eleanor.

Two very good-with-words people.

And I like words. A lot.

He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

She said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.”

I fear that my future will be like my present: coming home to a loveless, peace-less, comfortless, and husbandless house.

I fear mere existence.

I fear loneliness.

I fear constraints and commitments.

I fear being misunderstood.

I fear getting heart-hurt.

I fear being wrong about my Jesus.

Sometimes the “one thing” I do every day is simply getting out of bed.

I have more to say about fear, and how it’s only a strangely comforting distraction, but I’m sleepy right now.

Now it’s a new day. Very new actually. An hour and a half old.

I only have fear to fear because fear is a cage. It holds me in, it restrains me. It keeps outside things out, denies them the opportunity to affect me.

I have lived in this cage so long that I’ve put cushions against the wire perimeter. I’m now comfortable in my little fear-box.

But this same box that keeps me ‘safe’ and in which I feel ‘comfortable’ is the same box which Jesus has crushed and out of which he calls me to crawl, feebly as it may be.

This same box which I’ve lived most of my life in is the same box that prohibits me from experiencing, from living, from being free.

So. While I’m safe, I’m merely existing.

While I’m safe, I’m lonely.

While I’m safe, I’m constrained and committed.

While I’m safe, I’m misunderstood.

While I’m safe, I’m getting heart-hurt.

And while I’m safe, I cannot know the Real Jesus.

Therefore, my fear is my worst fear. Fear causes me to see my fears realized in my life.

So what must I do? Take courage like a daily vitamin.

Courage: from the roots cuer and –age, meaning heart and whose range of senses it reflects closely, respectively.

Take heart. Live via Love because there is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love (1 John 4:18).

A Life of Love sounds a whole lot like a Life of Giant Leaps.

A Life of Asking Forgiveness instead of Permission.

A Life of Confident Strides.

A Life of No Regrets.

A Life of Freedom.

Oh, sweet Freedom.

To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive-to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before.     

-Rollo May