to what I succumb

As a child, I was afraid of the dark. I didn't like sleeping with my door shut, because it closed in all the potential monsters lurking about. I was reminded of this past anxiety this week as I struggled falling asleep a few nights ago. Earlier that day while I was making my bed, I unpleasantly discovered a spider within my sheets. After this little uncovering, my imagination was running wild as I tried to count sheep, willing myself to sleep that night.

Though I am now able to snooze soundly, I still have other fears that I hold close to my heart. I am afraid of rejection and often afraid of what people think about me. I am scared about the possibility of being alone for the rest of my life. I am scared of the responsibility of parenting that may someday come my way. I am also selfishly frightened to have a child as a child will forever change my life and my body. I dislike stepping on a scale as I am afraid of the numbers staring me in the face and sometimes I am even afraid to look in the mirror, admitting to the reflection on the other side. As I write this, I am afraid of the honest words I write and the honest light I am shedding on who I really am. So often I depict myself in a different way appealing to those around me.

But honesty is good, right? We are all real people with real fears and struggles. Some of my other fears are a little less intensive as I once claimed to have a "deathly fear" of having my umbrella flip inside out during a rainstorm. Really I don't know what I was thinking as I would much rather have that occur on a daily basis than my other fears that plague my days. A fear that materialized in my life this week happened after viewing a movie. I watched "Blood Diamond" for the first time and did not feel well after the movie realizing the innocence I often choose to live by.

The movie touches on the atrocities of a civil war and the way greed manifests itself in our lives. A rock is valued above the life a human being as men are dying for diamonds or the need/greed for diamonds. This movie made me sick and made me afraid of the innocence in my life. I often don't look past the problems in my own life. I am content not knowing aout the horrors of this world and I am content not attempting to care. Something is wrong with that and something about that makes me afraid. As I sat covering my eyes for parts of the movie, my fingers drifted to my ears where a pair of mini diamond earrings make their home.

As I watched men die for diamonds and as I felt the diamonds in my own ears, the sick feeling hit home. It really sunk in as I realized that I affect many people without even trying to understand. So often I live my own life for me and for no one else. My petty fears are often at the forefront of my mind as many other people fear for their lives everyday. How many people in this world do not know where they will safely lay their head tonight? How many girls in Cambodia have to fear the foreign men who travel to "visit" these girls as the innovent are exploited in a market of sex-trafficking? How many others are fearing for the life of their family while I simply miss my own?

It is amazing what perspective does. It is amazing how loudly a film can talk and how easily we are reminded of our selfishness. I daily succumb to my fears as I daily live with "me" as the most important person in my life. Funny that before I had any of these ponderings on paper or before I even saw this film, this week's memory verse I chose for 4th grade is Phillipians 2:3 "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. In humility, consider others better than yourselves."

Once again, I think Someone knows what I need to hear and what I need in my life before I know it myself. And that Someone can truly take care of all the fears to which I succumb, if only I let Him.