On the Other Side of Fear. Hallie Lord

Chapter Six

       Abraham

       Chapter Seven

       Edel Soup

       Chapter Eight

       Onward

       Chapter Nine

       Slow Work

       Chapter Ten

       Compass

       Chapter Eleven

       With Gratitude

       Chapter Twelve

       Maximilian

       Chapter Thirteen

       Magnolias

       Chapter Fourteen

       Spreadsheets

       Acknowledgments

       About the Author

       Introduction

      When I was thirty-six weeks pregnant with my fifth child, a little girl we named Zelie Olive, my husband walked through the back door of our cottage by the sea as I was cleaning the lunch dishes, with comments about getting off work early that day quick to his lips. He ushered me to bed so that I could nap, but sleep proved elusive. I knew, the way husbands and wives just know after having been married for almost a decade, that there was something he wasn’t telling me.

      Later that night, after our little ones were tucked soundly into their beds, sandy traces of the salty sea still sticking to their toes, he sat me down and broke the news. Earlier that day he had been laid off, effective immediately. His company, he explained, had become the latest victim of the financial crisis that had hit the Gulf Coast as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. We were left with two weeks severance pay and less than a month of insurance to our name.

      I spent the last weeks of my pregnancy curled up in a ball on our living room couch. My children took turns cuddling up with me, releasing the silly things that had been dancing in their heads into my ear, and kissing their newest sibling as she rolled and stretched beneath my ribs. My sweet husband brought me food, rubbed my feet, and assured me that we would be fine. Friends and family visited and poured love into our family in myriad ways as the summer grew later and hotter.

      It was a beautiful, life-giving, love-rich time, but I barely experienced any of it. I had locked myself away in a dungeon of fear and anxiety, where my only companions were vivid worst-case scenarios that played in my head on repeat. I closed my eyes against the rays of light that attempted to break through the small prison window and silenced the voices that were calling out to me with words of comfort and reassurance.

      When we are in danger, our instinct is to run and hide and then to curl up in a ball to protect ourselves from being hurt. That is the same instinct we tap into when we’re afraid. We hide away and then turn in on ourselves and wait, head down and knees in, until the pummeling stops. Do we escape some of fear’s more vicious blows when we do that? Perhaps. But we will never win the war that way. No one ever defeated their fears by hiding from them.

      Do you know why fear stands behind you and whispers scary things into your ear? Because it doesn’t want you to look it in the face. It knows that the moment you stand up and engage, you will discover what it has desperately been trying to hide from you. You will discover that fear is a liar.

      Fear paints vivid pictures of problems without solutions, sorrow without relief, mortification without mercy, and life without joy. It tells us that there is no hope and that our burdens are too heavy for any one person to endure. Admittedly, it does so in a very compelling way. But “compelling” is not synonymous with “true,” so these lies can only thrive when we push them down deep inside and hide them from the light.

      This book is the story of how I looked fear in the face and discovered that its power is an illusion, definitively destroyed when held up to the light of God.

      The following chapters can stand alone as each one possesses its own unique lesson. You can read this book from front to back or back to front or you can skip around. It can be consumed in one sitting, or fifty. You can even read it while standing on your head, if you like. It’s up to you.

      No matter how you approach this book, though, I can promise you one thing: you will walk away from it knowing how to conquer your fears. It won’t happen overnight, and it will require a good deal of discipline, fortitude, and faith, but you will never regret having taken the journey. I wasted far too many years in the grip of fear, and I can tell you that no matter what it takes to overcome your fears, no matter how hard you have to work or how much you have to sacrifice, it’s worth it. For here, on the other side of fear, lies freedom. Here lies the ability to love, savor, and create with abandon. And here lies the vibrant, adventurous, full life that God has created just for you.

      Welcome, sweet friends.

       Chapter One

      Champagne Flutes

       Fear is the enemy of love.

       ~ St. Augustine

      For our wedding, Dan and I received a pair of champagne flutes. They were delicate and perfectly shaped, and I loved them. I loved them so much, in fact, that one night, having moved into a new home earlier that day, I pounded on the door of our old house and asked the bewildered new owners if I might peer into their kitchen cabinets to see if I’d left them behind in the move.

      It was November, or maybe December, but definitely post-Daylight Saving Time, and the evening was cold, dark, and rainy. I must have looked a sight with my long coat pulled tightly over my ratty moving clothes and my wet hair stuck to the side of my face. I didn’t have their phone number, though, and was desperately afraid that they’d throw them out or give them away before I had a chance to retrieve them, so there I stood, pounding away with a slightly manic look in my eye.

      They let me in, and there, tucked into the back of a worn wooden cupboard, sat my two perfect matching flutes. I quickly tucked them under my arm and hurried out of the home that was no longer mine with grateful thanks and mildly mortified apologies on my lips.

      That