Project Fear
"Come on" he said. "He won't touch you. I'll be standing with you. I promise he won't touch you when I'm there."
There are certain memories from early childhood that seem to just stick in the mind. I must have been all of 6 years old at the time and the shortest boy in my year as well. I recall this really nasty piece of work from a higher year. He was violent. He still is. As an adult he has a reputation for violence and, even at that young age, he liked violence. For some reason he chose me.
I got singled out by a number of people in those years but I had one advantage. I could run. I rarely got caught but I couldn't outrun this one.There was nothing I could do.
Then one time another boy approached me and asked me if I was alright. When I told him what was happening he said he was going to tell him to stop and I was to come with him. I really didn't want to. I was very scared but he insisted nothing would happen to me. "Come on" He said, "He won't touch you. I'll be standing with you. I promise he won't touch you when I'm there. I won't let him do anything"
So, tentatively, I followed this boy, who, by the way, was the one person in the whole school who was taller than the bully. He told him very directly to leave me alone. The bully didn't like it and insisted he was going to beat me up anyway but nothing happened. He just stood there and talked tough but didn't do anything.
As I got older I hid fear well. I learned quickly that you didn't show fear, or weakness. I basically lied to myself. I convinced myself I could do anything or stand up to anybody...but I rarely did. Fear became like a cancer that had grown and grown until it's tentacles were intertwined with who I was. It was hard to tell where the fear ended and I began. I learned to keep my guard up and never show weakness or fear. Honestly though, it wasn't just the fear I hated. It was hiding fear for fear of being seen to be scared. You just never ever admitted it.
As I got older it affected my ability even to do certain basic things. As a young man I was sharing a house with two others and was late paying the rent so I had to go to the office of the letting agent to explain and pay the outstanding rent in two parts. I must have stood outside there for over half an hour. It wasn't only the aforementioned fact of the rent that scared me {although that made the fear much worse}. It was simply having to engage a total stranger in conversation knowing they might ask me questions. It took me aged just to do something that took under 5 minutes.
When I left school I got a job which necessitated my going to college one day a week. Part of the course required that we give a 5 minute presentation on anything at all to all of the other students in our class. I was utterly petrified by this. I waited as one by one all the others had their go, hoping that I could duck out. The tutor didn't forget me though. I just couldn't do it. It was explained to me that I had to do something, anything as completion of this section was essential to passing the course. I was stuck. I don't know how long the tutor and other students took in trying to encourage and reassure me. For a while I was having none of it but the fear of failing the course and having to explain this to my employer pushed me over the edge and I gave a presentation. Seriously, it took an even greater fear to push me through the other fear. That's how bad it was.
When I became a Christian there were some radical immediate changes. This wasn't one of them. It was a long drawn out battle that I avoided having. It actually began to change when I heard a sermon which basically had the message "Fear is not God's will for your life". To be honest that just made me feel worse! Now I feel bad for being fearful! However, that was the start of the turnaround for me. It was the start of me realising that I needed to deal with this cancer of fear and it was from that point certain things began to change.
The one overriding thing that has helped me was when I began to pray about it and be honest with God. It was as if I saw God standing right there with me. No longer seeming distant and barely real but very present and especially in those more precarious moments.
Thinking back to that early childhood experience it makes a lot of sense. The only motivation I had in approaching the school bully was the insistence that I needed to, coupled with the fact that the one person bigger that him assured me he would be with me and that nothing would happen to me. I felt like I'd just discovered a nugget of gold that could change my life forever. It did, in ways I wasn't even expecting.
There was this guy at work. He was the original Mr Angry. This guy had an horrendous temper and his calm moments seem to be just below explosion point. He ran a production line and I worked upstairs tipping products into several hoppers that fed a number of lines. Anyway, to cut a long story short he marched upstairs and demanded to know why his production line had stopped. Seriously I felt an adrenaline rush of fear. But then something else happened. Something said to me, "You are my son. just tell the truth. I'm right here with you." I was surprisingly calm as I realised what had happened. In the business and rush of the morning I had neglected to check that one hopper and it ran out. Instead of trying to kop out I simply looked right at him and said, "Oh, I didn't realise. I must have let it run out. I'll get it filled." This guys face was already so red it could have stopped traffic but as soon as I told the truth it was like all the wind was taken out of his sails. It caught him completely off guard. He just said, "oh, ok then" and just calmed down completely.
It was the sudden change that interested me. I wondered about that and realised that in our workplace we had a culture where nobody admitted anything. People passed the buck routinely and he just expected me to do what everyone else did. When I told the truth and took responsibility he didn't know how to react. It took him totally by surprise.
Up to that point I had taken a lot of flack from supervisors, there was a real culture of anger there and several people reacted in anger as a kind of default setting. I, however, had discovered a better way of dealing with things that simply duck and hide. I began to calmly stand up for myself. I began to refuse to fear getting the sack.
That was many years ago now. The process is still going on but I've come a long way. For many years now I have been involved in public speaking. I have spoken in many churches and even gone to other nations and addressed people of other languages. It struck me just how remarkable that it when I shared my story of fear with someone who had heard me speak. They were astonished "But you sound so confident" were the words they used. I've heard similar sentiment from several people after a speaking engagement. Apparently I am assured, confident and in control. Seriously, this same guy who one time almost failed a whole section of his college course because he just could not bear to give a simple 5 minute presentation now addresses various groups of people on a regular basis.
To me, when I think of that, it is a miracle. I know of others, who through good psychology, have learned to overcome fears but for me it was a matter of divine intervention. Knowing that someone is right there with me. Someone who has seen every thing I ever did and thought and yet accepts and loves me unconditionally is an incredible confidence builder. That's how God really is. It took me a long time to learn that.
As I close I want to share with you something I recently heard a friend say which I though was as powerful as it was profound. He said, "Deep inside we worry, if you knew everything about me, would you love me regardless? The great need of the human heart is to be fully known and yet fully loved" It's the very thing that puts many of us off God. That idea of one who knows everything about us and has seen and heard everything. What resonates in the human heart {and certainly in mine} is that he knows us fully and absolutely loves us unconditionally. Perfect love casts out fear.
Steve Johnson
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"In that moment, hiding in the dark, not knowing if I would get out alive, I prayed to a God I hitherto didn't believe existed. I said "If you get me out of this I promise I will behave myself"
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