Crushing the Fear Threatening to Crush Me
Editor’s Note: While we believe the gospel provides hope to moms in all of our fears, we also acknowledge that anxiety, trauma, grief, etc. are multi-faceted experiences that affect us physically, mentally, and emotionally. As such, this article is not meant to replace professional help. We encourage anyone who is struggling with deep-seated fears to seek help from a counselor, pastor, medical doctor, or other skilled professionals in your local community.
My entrance to motherhood was also an entrance to new fears. As I swayed back and forth lulling my firstborn to sleep, my mind would drift to random scenarios with not-so-good outcomes. When one child went through stages of hitting and then biting, I catastrophized the kind of person he’d become and then worried I was messing him up by being too hard or too lenient in my response.
The teen years brought all-new fears. What were they exposed to when I wasn’t around? Would this homeschooling thing work and would they get into college? Was I crazy letting her fly alone across the globe for mission work?
Most of my fears seemed remote and, for the most part, I could push them aside as garden-variety motherhood worries.
Until life imploded in a way I never saw coming. One evening, I went to bed happily married and woke up the next morning a widow and single mom to our seven kids.
Staring Fear in the Face
When the unthinkable happens, it throws the door to fear wide open. My worries no longer seemed remote. If one shoe dropped, the other just might as well.
Maybe for you, it’s a diagnosis or miscarriage, a betrayal by someone you should have been able to trust, or notice that a job is gone. Suddenly, the vague what-ifs can become paralyzing fears that no longer seem far-fetched.
I was wracked with worry after my husband’s death. We were a one-income family and that income was now gone. I was terrified for my children, because I knew children who had spiraled after a parent’s death, and I’d long heard statistics about children raised in single-parent homes. I worried about their health, about my health as the only remaining parent, and how in the world I could raise teen boys to men without their dad.
I began parenting out of fear. Fear was crushing me from the inside out, stealing any semblance of peace, and paralyzing me from moving forward. I knew something had to change.
Finding Fear’s Root
The breakthrough came one morning over coffee with my friend Teresa. As hot tears spilled down my cheeks, I told Teresa how anxious I was, especially for my kids.
“Oh, I know this one,” Teresa answered.
For more than ten years, this friend had been fighting her own battle against fear after getting a chronic, degenerative diagnosis. As she quoted 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, this friend handed me the mightiest key I’ve found to not simply manage fear but to crush it altogether:
“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).
I love that Scripture doesn’t just tell us not to fear but tells us practically how to do that.
The root of fear isn’t ultimately in our circumstances; it’s in our mind.
Overcoming Fear’s Hold
When fear begins to loop in our thoughts, we can put these 2 Corinthians verses to work. Going home from that coffee date, I looked the passage up in my Bible, bookmarked it, and began applying it.
First, I called out the lie behind the fear. Often, our fear is based on a lie—a thought or presumption “raised against the knowledge of God.” Our fear for the future, for example, might be based on the superstitious lie that we’re overdue for a bad event. Perhaps financial fears are rooted in the lie that God can’t or won’t provide for us. Parenting fears can stem from the lie that a child’s tantrum means she’s destined for a life of bad behavior.
Once we identify the lie, the second step is to take it captive to obey Christ. I imagined a lasso encircling the lie and pulling it from my thoughts. I needed this concrete picture to uproot lies that had become entrenched.
Finally, we replace the lie with God’s truth. God’s truth is always based on his promises and his character. That’s why it’s so important to consistently study God’s Word, to know who God is and what he promises.
When anxiety about raising my children without their dad reared up, I repeated the promise that God is Father to the fatherless.[1] When I began to worry about finances, I took God at his Word that he will supply all our needs.[2] When fear kept me stuck in indecision, I trusted God would give me the wisdom he’s promised.[3]
Applying 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 to my fear felt clunky at first—like a toddler trying to walk in his father’s loafers. It felt cumbersome to pause my thoughts, look for the lie, lasso it from my mind, and re-focus on a promise or something of God’s character.
But as I did this over and over, day after day, I began to see fear no longer dominated my thoughts. I was parenting more out of love, not panic. My future was still uncertain but no longer felt foreboding.
When a new worry rears up now, instead of letting it lead me down the road to sure catastrophe, I can call out the lie and calmly re-anchor in God’s truth. As you seek to take your own fearful thoughts captive, you too can “come to know and to believe the love that God has for us,” that “God is love, and . . . there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:16-18). Friends, let’s live in his fear-crushing love today.
[1] Psalm 68:5
[2] Philippians 4:19
[3] James 1:5
