3 Ways to Fight Fear in Motherhood
We live in a place filled with tropical diseases and mosquito-borne illnesses. Our kids are surrounded by women in head coverings and the call to prayer bellows through our neighborhood five times a day. We moved here shortly after our first wedding anniversary. After our twins were born and we told people that we were going back to continue the work God called us to in Southeast Asia, some people asked if we were bringing the kids with us.
As shocked as I was the first time I heard the question, it didn’t take me long to understand why it was asked. Our souls crave comfort, health, security, and a life that’s predictable and stable. The journey we’re bringing our kids into as we live in a developing country guarantees none of those things.
I could list all the reasons we feel this life is good for them—how they’re learning to love and value people from different cultures, how they’re learning that it’s actually good for us when we walk through hard things—and while those benefits are all true and I pray our kids are shaped by the unique story God is writing with their lives, I still struggle with fear. And reflecting on those good things is not enough to calm my anxious heart when I think about all the “what ifs” that may happen to them.
No, the only true and lasting comfort is dwelling on the reality of the One who is greater than every fear, every dreaded “what if,” and every other worldly religion. He has used Isaiah’s words to show me that it’s not the absence of fear my heart needs, but rightly-placed fear:
For the Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: “Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary…” (Isaiah 8:12–14)
Isaiah’s challenge here offers several ways for us to fight fear in motherhood:
1. Consider Your Fears
First, God’s people are not supposed to live in fear of the same things the world around us fears. As Edward T. Welch says, “worry and fear are more about us than about the things outside us. They reveal what is valuable to us, and what is valuable to us in turn reveals our kingdom allegiances.”[1] Our fears reveal what we are truly bowing before, where we have truly placed our hope for deliverance. So, it’s vitally important that we consider our fears. What do our fears reveal about how we view God? Is he sovereign over every sickness and ailment our children may face? Is he sovereign over who our children become, regardless of what school they get into? Is he sovereign over their bodies and their health, even if “organic” and “grass-fed” don’t exist where we live?
2. Rightly Direct Your Fear
Secondly, the way to deal with our fears is not to try to eliminate all fear from our lives, but to cultivate the right kind of fear and direct it towards the only One worthy of our fear. The Bible uses the phrase “fear the Lord” enough times to reveal that our hearts were created to fear, but that sin and our broken hearts have directed those fears in all the wrong places. Isaiah shows us that in the Lord’s presence, we stand fearful and trembling, in awe of who He is and how utterly beyond us He is in every way. Why? Let’s remember for a moment who this God is that we’re talking about.
He is the Creator of galaxies that, even with ever-growing technology, humans will never be able to explore in all their grandeur. They are beyond our ability to fathom and yet he calls them each by name.[2]
He is the One who, with one word, created the sea creatures that teem in ocean depths that we have only recently been able to discover.[3]
He not only created it all, but he is the one who holds all things together. All. Things.[4]
3. Find Sanctuary in Fearing the Lord
But, did you catch what Isaiah said after he talked about dreading the Lord? That as we fear him, he becomes a sanctuary—a place of refuge and protection. Because we are his by the blood of Jesus Christ, we come to this holy and mighty God and find refuge and rest from every other fear.
The reason it’s good and right for us to live in fear of our God is the beautiful mystery that, somehow, as we fear him more and fear the things around us less, he becomes the safest place we will ever know. In his presence we find protection that no earthly safety net could ever offer. Our circumstances may not change; the fears that surround us may still be just as present. But we have no need to live in bondage to those fears any longer because we now fear the One who holds all those things together—the One who directs the oceans’ currents and ordains mosquito bites. We can trust that nothing happens to us or our children that hasn’t first passed through his wise and loving hands.
Raising our children in a broken world filled with sickness and pain and evil means we will always struggle with fear. But, in our struggle, let us continually look to his greatness and power over all things, letting the reality of his sovereign care over us and our families be a sanctuary of sweet rest amidst the storm of fears swelling around us. May we parent in such a way that our kids see how tightly we cling to him and how loosely we hold onto everything else.
[1] Edward T. Welch, Running Scared: Fear, Worry, and the God of Rest, (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2007), 147.
[2] Isaiah 40:26
[3] Psalm 104:24-25
[4] Colossians 1:16-17
