Fear Fighting In The New YearSample

"Chasing Brave"

When I look at myself, I see a girl who wants to be brave but isn’t so certain she actually can be.
 
I have tried to will myself into better thinking: Kelly, you can do it, stop fearing. I have tried to chide myself into better thinking: Kelly, you will never pull yourself together if you act like this. I have even tried to shame myself into confidence: Kelly, you are going to push everyone away with your bad anxiety.

When all these efforts fail, I normally give up and give in to some sort of pleasure to get my mind off it. TV, food, drink, movie—you name it, I know it. Even talking about this induces my other cure-all answer that is easy to offer: Kelly, give ’em Jesus. He will make everything all right.

But things didn’t look “all right” for Jesus. Things weren’t all peaches and sugar. They were hard. They were painful. They were tough.

Jesus never said to expect easy. So why do we?

Maybe this is the exact kind of encouragement I really need. I need to know someone gets me. Someone has been down a road with a debilitating cross on His back as He pushed into real life. Knowing this, I won’t feel so alone and scared. Then I can maybe see how He makes sense out of everything, even the little things, the pains and threats of today.

It is not so much that I don’t have to be struggling as it is just that I have to get after Jesus and bring Him into my struggle with me. Doing this—it is called chasing brave.