Take Heart

Refocusing Your Gaze When Confronted by Fear with Carrie M. Holt

• Amy J Brown, Carrie Holt and Sara Clime • Season 2 • Episode 60

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Fear can be paralyzing and cause us to say or do things we normally wouldn’t. There are many times in scripture where the phrase “take heart” or a variation of the phrase is written. Carrie reminds us of some strategies to move our focus from fear to Jesus.

November 9, 2021; Ep. 60

Timestamps & Key Topics:

  • 0:20-    Intro
  • 1:19-    Take Heart
  • 6:30-    Focus on the Now
  • 8:30-    Focus on the Who
  • 10:53-  Focus on the Next Step
  • 13:11-  Focus on the Future
  • 16:04-  Encouragement From John
  • 16:59-  Outro

Episode Links & Resources:

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(0:20) Welcome to Take Heart, where our goal is to offer encouragement, give hope and insight, so you can flourish in your journey as a special needs mom. As we explore monthly themes, share inspiring stories and practical tips, our desire is to continue to serve you and your listeners. Do you know we have an email list where you can get a monthly newsletter? Each month, we're offering our newsletter subscribers, a Spotify playlist of a month that matches our theme, and also a written monthly prayer. You don't want to miss it. You can help us spread the word about our podcast by sharing it on social media, subscribing and leaving a review. Amy, Sara, and I thank you for joining us today.

(1:19) Hello there, it's Carrie M. Holt today, and this month's topic is about fear. The timing of this seems pretty perfect. In today's environment. We have been surrounded by fear. Take Heart is the name of this podcast, and we actually took the name from the scripture in John 16:33 that says, "I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world, you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." Can you just pause the podcast right now for a second and just let that sink into your soul? God has given us peace. Jesus was saying these things to His disciples and these words echo into our hearts through the ages. In this world, we are going to experience tribulation, but we need to take heart. We need to have courage because Jesus has overcome it all. So this actually sent me on a search for that phrase through the Bible. We're going to talk about it again later in the podcast. So fear is really a normal reaction, a normal emotion to scary situations. It's an emotion that protects us from doing things that are, well, unsafe. I think about the time that I was running, and we have these crazy Canada geese around all these pools of water in our neighborhoods. This geese came after me, and I was screaming like a mad person at the goose telling the goose that I was going to kick its head in. Yeah, not a pretty moment, but I was scared. So I was saying things that I normally wouldn't say. I was screaming at a goose that couldn't hear me. But we all have fears that we have to deal with on a daily basis. What are some of your greatest fears right now? May I share a few of mine over the years? In the early days of my son's birth, it was just the unknown. Would I be able to handle three boys, three and under? How is this going to affect our other two children, especially those long three months in the hospital in the beginning? A lot of times. I fear the future, not being around to care for him. Will he be able to live on his own? I know I've mentioned some of this before. A few years ago, my son had some issues with his shunt, and we ended up being in the hospital for over two weeks. Right around that time, there were a couple other children with the same diagnosis that I knew locally and through social media, who had just recently passed away from his condition. You know what? I was gripped by fear. I felt like, oh, my goodness, we have tempted fate so many times. I don't even believe in fate. This was my thought process. We've tempted fate so many times that this is going to be it. I have worn out God's patience. I've worn out his mercy. We've worn out his grace, that this is going to be it. This is going to be the time when God's just gonna get tired of healing him, and He's gonna take him home to be with Him. I had to face those fears. I can tell you that it was really difficult, and I spent a lot of time crying, and being paralyzed by that fear. But some of the things that I had to remind myself even in that situation was, first of all, was that God never runs out of patience, or mercy, or compassion. Not like we do. We are mortal human beings, who run out of patience, mercy, and compassion. We fatigue, but God never gets tired. He never gets tired of us coming to him with our fears. So we are going to experience fear. I know the Bible talks a lot about: Fear not, and do not be afraid, and let not your heart be troubled. Those are some of those instances of hearing that phrase "take heart" over and over in Scripture. But it's what we do with the fear. Do we let it rule us? Do we let it affect our decisions? Matthew 9:2 says that Jesus sees the man who is paralyzed, and he says, "when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven." How could he have both faith, and I'm assuming fear? Jesus told him to take heart, so I don't think that faith necessarily means there's an absence of fear. It's what we're doing with this emotion and how we're acting on it. 

(6:30) Dr. Dan Allender, from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology and the Allender Center in his podcast, called the Allender Center, and it's specifically the episode called Trauma and the Church recommends these steps when you're faced with fear or traumatic situations. He talks about grounding yourself, not focusing on what's happened in the past, or focusing on what might be happening in the future, but only focusing on being in this space right now. Amy kind of talked about this last month in the podcast. Maybe it's going outside and going for a walk. Maybe it's looking at the clouds or the trees, but it's just grounding yourself in a way that you're focusing on what is around you because a lot of times when we are paralyzed by fear, we're also in shock. The second step that he tells is to breathe four or five seconds in and four or five seconds out. Again, I might be quoting Amy, but I know that she talks a lot about breathing, in her social media and our blog, and in her conversations on the podcast. I know that the only way that I look back and understand is just one small way how we got through that really long hospital stay when our son was a baby where he was fighting for his life. It wasn't because I had great faith, but it was because I would focus on that day only. A lot of times we were in the hospital, at least in our hospital, the nurses will come in and they'll put up the goals for that day. They'll focus on maybe that a test has been ordered, like an x-ray or CT scan or an MRI. Maybe that day's goal is to wean the oxygen down a half a liter. Just focus on right now, on what this day is holding. 

(8:30) The second way is to focus on the who: who God is. So when I was experiencing that amazing fear several years ago, I think I talked about it a little bit but I had to focus on the fact that in my fears, I began to believe things about God that weren't true. I began to believe or think that God was tired of rescuing my son from hospital stays because we've had a lot. He's had almost 60 surgeries, and you can imagine that sometimes I feel like we've just worn out God's compassion and healing capabilities. Is he still my Jehovah Jireh the God who provides, Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals? We can start to convince ourselves that Jesus isn't in control. Here's another instance of the phrase "take heart" and it's in Matthew 14. This is actually when the storm came, and the disciples were in the boat, and the waves were huge. It was an amazing, huge storm. I think sometimes we have this Sunday school version that the storm was just this little tiny storm. It wasn't; it was huge. Jesus began to walk on the water toward them. The disciples thought he was a ghost, so of course, they were afraid. Matthew 14:27 says, "Immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, "Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid." He told them who He was. Then we know this part about Peter getting out of the boat. Sometimes I feel like Peter gets a little bit of a bad reputation. You know what, he was the only one to get out? Of course, he started to sink when he lost his focus on who Jesus was, and who was in control. We definitely become more fearful when we think that we are the ones who are in control. Yet Colossians 1:17 says, "And he is before all things, and in him, all things hold together." So I think we have to focus on who he is. Again, he doesn't get tired, he doesn't grow weary. His compassions never fail. His mercies are new every morning. They rain down on us every morning. So in your fears, right now. focus on the who. 

(10:53) Number three, focus on the next step of obedience, if there is one. Now you might be thinking, Carrie, you just told me to focus on right now, to focus on the who. This might be eventually. As you reorient yourself, there might be a next step. Another instance of Scripture telling us to "take heart" is in Mark 10:49. So the disciples of Jesus were coming to Jericho and a huge crowd was following them. There was a man who was blind, his name was Bartimaeus, and he was calling out to Jesus, crying out to him. The others rebuked him and told him to stay silent. But Jesus says, "Call him." The crowd then calls him and they tell him take heart, get up, he is calling you, and he sprang up. Then Jesus asked him what he wanted him to do for him as in Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus replies, "Rabbi, let me recover my sight." Sometimes that next step of obedience is just telling God what we need and want. We have not because we ask not. Sometimes in our fears, God is showing us that it's just a little step of trust. It's saying that prayer. It’s telling Jesus what we need. We want to feel his presence. We need him to remind us of who he is. I see Bartimaeus in this, and sometimes I feel that, if I was in that situation, how would I have reacted if I would have been there? I probably would have been one of the crowd telling Bartimaeus to be quiet because I was afraid of what Jesus was thinking. There's that fear again. But yet, once Jesus calls out, the crowd tells Bartimaeus take heart, have courage. He's calling you. He's asking for you. And I want to tell you right now that God is asking for you to come to him, with your fears, with your worries, with your anxieties, bring them all to him. Ask him for what you need. 

(13:11) Lastly, in our fears, we should focus on the future. Again, you're going to be saying, What in the world Carrie? You just told me to focus on right now. You told me to focus on who God is. Now you're telling me to focus on the future. It seems kind of contradictory. What this is, is this is for those moments outside of the paralyzing fear or trauma that you're going through. Focusing on the future is during calm times. What it means is realizing that our life is but a vapor as Ecclesiastes tells us. This has been one of my recent favorite quotes. I read aloud to my kids a lot in our homeschool journey. There's a book by S.D. Smith called The Wreck and Rise of Whitson Mariner. It's in a particularly fearful time in the book, when one the character says to another character. "We have to keep loving what's on the other side of this fight, the other side of this rescue, and that will have to make us brave." So my encouragement for you is to focus on the future, in the remembrance that God is holding us. Heaven is on the other side, reconciliation, perfect peace. We have to keep loving what's on the other side. Romans and II Corinthians, talk to us about our light and momentary troubles. What can make us have this long term view? What can make us look at our fears as light and momentary? If you remember, Paul talked about this, and his troubles weren't light and momentary. He had a thorn in the flesh that he asked God to remove several times, and God chose not to. We don't know what that was. Maybe we don't know what that was specifically, because then we can identify with it. Paul experienced persecution, torture, prison, but he said, these light and momentary troubles are light in compared to the eternal weight of glory that awaits us. Focusing on the future means having a long term view, knowing and trusting that God's gonna make everything right, whole, and perfect, just like Eden was before the fall. So what we have to do is keep loving what's on the other side of this fight. I'm not saying your child has a fight, but maybe sometimes they are, or your circumstances are. Maybe it's your marriage. The other side of this rescue, we have to keep loving Jesus, and He will give us the courage to face our fears. 

(16:04) Lastly, I want to close with some encouragement from John. "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." 

(16:59) Thank you for joining us on  Take Heart. Our prayer each week is for your heart to be encouraged. We are grateful you're walking on this journey with us. Be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter just like we talked about at the beginning of the podcast. You can go to www.takeheartspecialmoms.com, and we have some amazing resources on there now. We have our resource, 7 Practices and Pitfalls of Advocacy, on there. You can also follow us on Instagram or Facebook @takeheartspecialmoms. If you have any questions or comments, follow the links in our show notes. We love hearing from our listeners. Thank you for listening, and listen in next week, as Sara talks more about fear.