Take Heart

Living In the Land of What If: Dealing With Fear

• Amy J Brown, Carrie Holt and Sara Clime • Season 2 • Episode 62

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Sometimes, fear disguises itself as other emotions, and it’s important to recognize it for what it is. Fear of the future can paralyze us. In this episode, Sara, Amy, and Carrie dive into recognizing fear, dealing with fear of the future, and some practices for living led by God’s love.

November 23, 2021; Ep. 62

Timestamps & Key Topics:

  • 0:21-    Intro
  • 1:03-    Pushed By Fear Or Led By Love
  • 3:37-    Recognizing Fear
  • 9:45-    Fear of the Future
  • 17:26-  Don’t Live in “What If” Land
  • 20:20-  Led By Love
  • 25:03-  Ground Level Practices
  • 27:35-  A Prayer
  • 29:41-  Outro

Episode Links & Resources:

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Amy J. Brown  0:21  
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 new listeners. You can help us spread the word by subscribing to our podcast or leaving a review, or maybe you can share the podcast with others. Sara Curie and I want to thank you for joining us today.

Hello, this is Amy Brown. And this month, we've been talking about fear. I've been reflecting a lot about how fear has been my constant companion since I've been a little girl. Maybe you can relate. As kids, we're afraid of the dark and all kinds of little things that seem big, and then we grow, and our fears get bigger. Then we became special needs moms. Our life as special needs moms give us many opportunities to feel fear. On the flip side, we do things every day that would terrify other people. Fear is a common emotion. We can all name things we're afraid of, but it can also creep in without us realizing it. When fear creeps in, it can be pervasive and control so many areas of our life that we may not recognize. We all have big moments when we can armor up. We know the storm is coming, like a hospital stay, and we can prepare. I'm not saying there's no fear in those moments. I want to talk more about the small fears of everyday living. Those kinds of fears are like a constant slow drip, that end up ruining our souls if we do not attend to it. I want to read a section of Henri Nouwen's book, Spiritual Formation, and here's what he says, "The more people I come to know and the more I come to know people, the more I am overwhelmed by the negative power of fear. It seems that fear has invaded every part of our lives, that we no longer know what a life without fear would feel like. Fear has penetrated our inner self so deeply that it controls, whether we're aware of it or not, most of our choices and decisions. Untamed fear can become a cruel tyrant who takes possession of us and forces us to live as hostages in the house of fear." I'm going to repeat that last line. Untamed fear can become a cruel tyrant who takes possession of us and forces us to live as hostages. Are you living in a house of fear? Another way to put this is: Are you being pushed by fear or led by love? That's from Emily P. Freeman. It's the next right thing. I have to admit that I am pushed by fear more times than not. So one of the questions I have today as we spend the next few minutes talking about fear, and recognizing those small fears in our life, is what does it look like to be pushed by fear? How do you know when you are in a place of fear?

Carrie M Holt  3:37  
All right, so I feel like for me, it takes me a while to realize that I'm being pushed by fear because it comes out in my emotions. I'm just reacting to situations. I'm biting everyone's heads off in my family. Just recently, my son had a couple doctor's appointments. In both appointments on back to back days, I found myself just getting ready to cry. It was just very odd because they weren't overly horrible appointments, or there wasn't any news that was earth shattering. I honestly felt super silly and just ridiculous. What I have learned in the last couple of years and even just in the last year is how to pay attention to my body and how to pay attention to my emotions because your body has memory. Your limbic system has memory and and just to pay attention to my posture. I began to ask myself those questions: why was I crying in these appointments? What was it about those situations? I realized that it was fear. I had a fear of making the wrong decisions, fears over some choices that we've had to make recently with our son. A lot of times it comes out for me personally in those emotions,  and I'm overly sensitive about things, especially if I'm in situations where I might overly care about what that person thinks, like these doctors. I have this heightened awareness, and I am just being pushed by fear. So that's just the way that I have been reacting recently to fear and what it looks like, for me personally. 

Sara Clime  5:42  
I think, for me, I get super crabby, too, I think it must just be a thing. I had a recent bout where my husband, I had heard him saying, "I just really wish I had my wife back." He was telling me that I was a little bit over the top. Fortunately, after 24 years of marriage, we can say that and I don't get crabbier all the time. I think for me, whenever I'm being pushed by fear, I realize that I'm trying to push back. I power through, and so I don't really allow myself to feel the fear at first. I just figure, okay, I'm gonna power through all the emotions, the messy emotions. I break over something so small, and something so mundane. So for me, I feel like it's this spiral of emotions for me whenever I am being pushed by fear instead of love. So I think when you tend to try to power through everything, it gets messier, and it gets harder. Maybe it's just for me, but I tend to create more problems whenever I try to do that, or I collapse. I finally get to the point where I figure, I can't do anything anymore, and I'm done. That's usually my breaking point whenever I figure out that I'm being pushed by fear too much.

Amy J. Brown  7:14  
It makes me think of when the going gets tough, or even if it's not that tough, I get going. For me, it is overdoing, overthinking, trying to figure out a solution. Even if things are not that bad right now, let's say, I have to get an appointment for a kid and it's hard to get into a doctor. Then all of a sudden, I'll make it into a bigger thing, like you said, Sara. Oh, what if I can't get in? What if this happens? What if that happens? I think it's really important what you guys said, for our listeners to realize that when you're crying, or angry, or snappy at the lady at Starbucks, and you've come from a situation that's really not that big of a deal, what's operating under those feelings?  What's operating in our bodies, that we may not be recognizing. We've said this before on the podcast, but I even think under the fear is probably grief, too. It's not never just one emotion. Parker Palmer has a book called a Hidden Wholeness, and there's a quote and I'm going to misquote it, but he says something like the reason that we over do and try to find a solution quickly, in moments of stress is because we're afraid of our heart being broken. And that's true, we're afraid of what we're going to hear at the doctor, or what if we can't get the treatment we need or can't pay for the treatment, or what if it doesn't help or what happens next year, 10 years, 20 years down the road? It comes out in that kind of behavior, and we don't always recognize it. So I think for our listeners, recognizing it is the first step, because we don't want to live in that house of fear. Often, I find myself in that house way more than I should be or want to be. So. I want to go back a little bit. I want to go back to Henri Nouwen again. He talks about what we're supposed to do to get out of the house of fear. Before we do that, though, can we talk a little bit about the fear of the future that I think is unique to special needs parents? I think that also comes out in little ways that we're not realizing. If  either one of you wants to speak to that or we can speak to it in the rest of the questions too. But I know that it's very unique to us as special needs parents.

Carrie M Holt  9:45  
I think fear of the future is one of the hardest things because I know one of the ways that I know I'm being pushed by fear is when I'm living in the land of "what if." What if this happens? What if this happens? I think decision fatigue is real. I feel especially for special needs parents' decisions, fatigue is real, because you're constantly having to make even sometimes what are life impacting decisions. I've been thinking about this lately. I feel like one of the most common fears, especially with parents who have kids that are going to need ongoing care for the rest of their lives, and I know this isn't the case for all of our listeners. I think that we have this fear with those two fears. There's fear of burdening siblings, if there are siblings. Then there's the fear of what if my child outlives me, and there's the "I'm not around to direct their care. I got to thinking about that, especially in regards to the siblings. I have realized just in recent months that one of the mistakes that I've made with my own children has been trying to protect them too much from their brother's medical condition. I have tried so hard to make Toby's medical condition not become an inconvenience for the other kids, that they have come to see it as an inconvenience. I know Sara, you've talked a little bit about this from a different perspective of just how, like if you're constantly complaining about your child's care, or complaining about how it inconveniences your life, well, everyone else is going to pick up on that attitude. I think a lot of this whole idea that we should never burden the siblings, we should not burden family members with our child's care is actually an American western culture thing. You see other cultures that they come around and they care for the aging parents. I'm not saying that we don't do that in America. It's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that we should have caregiver burnout and all of these things, but I was listening to a podcast where Jess Ronne, who we interviewed this summer, she was interviewing Jolene Philo., who we also interviewed this summer. Joleen grew up with her father having Multiple Sclerosis. Jess was really pressing into Jolene, didn't you resent that? Didn't that bother you? Jolene said no, it was just part of our lives. It was part of what it was like to grow up. She had to do some really hard things, taking care of her father, having to use the restroom, and different things. I'm guessing that if I was reading between the lines in that situation that her mom created this community of care, if that makes sense. It wasn't a burden, but it was a privilege. I think we do have to start changing our perspective over our siblings, if there are siblings, and again, I know there are single moms out there. I know there are families who really have no family whatsoever, and my heart goes out to you. What I would say to you is just pray. Pray for a friend. Pray for that person that God can bring alongside to care for your child, and know and trust that God, God knows and he has this. So anyway, I know I talked a lot, but I've just really been convicted about this lately and just been processing a lot about this attitude that our children are inconveniences. They're not. They're their blessings, and caring for them is a blessing.

Sara Clime  13:53  
I'm glad that you brought up. I feel like we try to shelter the other siblings so much because they have so much to deal with, and it can have the opposite effect. Where I think that we can take their God given role to be more empathetic, to learn how to care for others. I think that sometimes I look at my oldest son, who doesn't have special needs, and I see how empathetic he is. I see how welcoming he is, how inclusive he is. I think he would have had that without? Maybe not, because we could have just gone through life, worrying about what we were worrying about, not what we worry about now. So I'm glad that you brought that up. I think fear of the future is...I think it's a reaction to try to protect yourself as well. I think anybody who knows about my son, he has a terminal disease and so our fear of the future, the majority of it, not every type of thing takes us back to death. When you were talking about you have this heavy load to carry. Then I have this fear of how long am I going to have to carry that because his is degenerative. It's so hard now. What's it gonna be like in six months, in a year, in five years? Then I start thinking, well, what happens whenever I don't have that heavy load to carry? I don't want that either. So, you get into this fear spiral. I think when you're  thinking about the future. Whenever I get too far gone with my "what ifs". It is so easy to fear. I think that makes us good moms to a point that we love our kids that much. So I don't want people to feel guilty, if you fear that, and if you fear, the fear, and then you fear the opposite of fear, and it's like some big cyclical, crazy train. Maybe that's just me. One of the Scriptures that I always keep in mind, whenever I think about that is, I have no control over the future, but God does. I always think about Luke 12:7, and it's "Indeed the very hairs of your head are all numbered, don't be afraid you are worth more than many sparrows." I have no clue how many hairs are on my child's head. I wouldn't even remotely want to sit down and count them. I wouldn't even try. I don't even want to, but God does. He not only does that for my son, but he does that for all of us. It reminds me that God cares more for him than I could ever comprehend, and he cares more for my child than I do. If he cares that much about sparrows, then he's going to care enough to make sure that my son's taken care of no matter what that future holds. That's usually where I think of the fear of the future. I always pull that scripture in to think, okay, God's got it under control, and he cares so much about us. We get so caught up in our daily lives thinking it is so hard, nobody has our back that we forget that God does, and that he's already ahead of us. If I keep that in mind, no matter how painful right now is, God's already there, a minute from now, five minutes from now, five years from now. I don't have to try to control the fear situation.

Amy J. Brown  17:23  
I was going to say about the fear of "what if". For the moms out there who have kids with invisible disabilities like attachment disorder, Fetal Alcohol, OCD, Oppositional Defiance, we could just keep naming. I think the fear there is, are they going to be okay in the future because you can't see their disability. I'm not going to be there to explain it. There's a lot of relational issues. If you can't have a relationship with people, because people judge you by your behavior, you worry about that. I mean, I worry about straight up practical stuff like are they going to be in trouble with the law? Are they going to be misunderstood if they are in trouble with the law? Are they going to make poor decisions because they can't make friends? So that whole "what if" land, we need to stay out of itI Because nothing good ever comes of the "what if land", let me just say. It's so hard not to go there. Like you guys said, we already have so many daily decisions, why would we start making decisions about something we have absolutely no control over? It's actually ridiculous, but that doesn't stop me from doing it. So for you moms out there, I understand that fear too. What's it gonna be like in the future for them? It's already hard to get resources for children like this. What's it going to be as an adult? I have a friend and she would say, "Don't borrow trouble." So don't borrow trouble about what's going to happen in the future because it doesn't serve us. Even if we say it with, "I believe, helped me in my unbelief, " like the man in the Bible. If we believe and have plaques on our walls that say God is in control, then there's a time we need to stand in that land, not the "what if" land. I want to go back to one thing Carrie said about siblings. I have a son,  I can't believe he's going to be 29, like how that happened? I have older kids, and who they are right now in your house are not who they're going to be when they're 30. So we can't take the kids we have now, the teens we have now, and go oh, they're not going to be compassionate when the kids are older because they grow. You've laid down the tracks of compassion. I agree with your point, Carrie, that we don't want to make it sound like a burden. In our family, we've had some pretty significant relationship breaking behavior, and yet I still have kids, amazing adult kids that some are, aren't ready to be in a relationship, but some are ready to be in a limited relationship. I don't know what it's gonna look like 20 years down the road. But I know that God is still working on those kids as they grow into adulthood, just like he's working on us. So that would be my encouragement in that situation. We can't judge what the 15 year old in our house is gonna look like, when he's 30. So that's something to remember. 

So I want to move out of that house of fear, and into the house of love. So I'm going to read Nouwen again. He says, "As Jesus travels with us in life, he teaches us how to return to the house of love. It is far from easy to grasp his teaching, because we are driven to panic by looking at the impossible task, the high walls, and the powerful waves and the heavy winds, the roaring storm. We keep saying, "Yes, yes, Jesus," but look, look at the storm. Jesus is a very patient teacher. He never stops telling us where to make our true home, what to look for, and how to live. Jesus invites us to live in his house of love." So Emily P. Freeman says, "Are we being pushed by fear or led by love?" How do we walk into the house of love? What does that look like in our lives as we first of all recognize our fear. I'd like to hear what you guys have to say about that.

Carrie M Holt  21:17 
So I think for me, when I'm being led by love I am first of all, just remembering who my child is as a person, and not looking at all of their medical needs and how it's turned our lives upside down. I think it is not borrowing trouble from tomorrow. So when I've experienced just some really paralyzing times of fear, I have had to just stop my racing thoughts and stop my worst case scenarios and think what is true about right now. What is true about today? Well, I know that today this is going on. I know today that God says that he's in control. I mentioned this in my individual podcast. I think sometimes we start to think and believe that somehow God runs out of compassion. God runs out of love. He runs out of mercy. He runs out of patience. In my instance, the time that I was so paralyzed by fear that something was going to happen to Toby, and he was going to die. It was actually not during a terrible medical situation. Yes, he was in the hospital. Yes, it was a slightly dangerous medical situation, but not as bad as we've been in. But honestly, what was pushing the fear was that I felt like we had exhausted God's healing power. Somehow this was going to be it because we had already been in the hospital, like 50 something times. All of a sudden, God wasn't going to say, "You know what? I'm done. I can't take this anymore." I think when we're being led by love, we're being led by the love of Christ when we remember who he truly is, not what our fearful minds have created God to be.

Sara Clime  23:26  
Kind of piggybacking on that one; it's almost like we project our own flaws on God. I know, there's only so much. If I'm at my breaking point, and he knows all my thoughts and all my behaviors and everybody else's, he has to be done. He has to be tired, but He doesn't. He doesn't get that way. Whenever I feel like I lead by love, whenever I truly sit back and trust God. That is really difficult to do. I just want to say I haven't mastered it, I probably never will. I hope one day maybe I will. I constantly feel that I think, okay, God, I give you my trouble, I give you my trouble, but then I'm peeking over his shoulder just to make sure he really still has it, and he's doing something with it. I feel like sometimes I micromanage God. I give him my troubles, but I want to tell them exactly how I want him to handle it. That's not leading by love. I'm not letting him lead me by love. So I can't lead by love if I'm not letting him lead me by love. That is for me and my personality I think is the hardest thing for me to do is just to chill out. It's so difficult. I feel like I'm at my best whenever I go a million miles an hour, but then on the flip side, I'm exhausted. Well yeah I'm exhausted because that's not sustainable. I feel like I'm led by love whenever I let God do it and stop trying to micromanage everything.

Amy J. Brown  25:03  
I would say that since we've talked about fear being constant, I have to get down to like ground level practices to help me get into that house of love. I can't think my way out of it, sometimes. I have to get down, like Carrie said, you have to pay attention to your body. So for me, a couple things that helped me reset how I'm thinking about my situation at the moment is, first of all, to name it. I'm afraid of this situation, and I'm acting angry. I'm searching the internet for hours on end to find the solution, whatever. I have to name it. Then another practice that, of course, the Bible, of course, we're going to say the Bible. Sometimes when I read the Bible, I feel like I have to dig into it and get things out of it. But, sometimes just reading, letting the words wash over my brain on a really shallow level. In my mind, at a shallow level, because it's alive and active and working in us, we can't forget that. Reading the Psalms, so when you say God's run out of his patience, you're like, wait a minute, I just read this the other day. Sometimes reading the Bible is like another chore to have an application from it, journal about it and all this stuff. I'm just learning that renews our mind. Even if you're listening to it. Listening to music that renews our mind, I feel like I have to be so active, but the Holy Spirit is being active in those moments, and we can't forget that. Then my last one that I do, and you guys know this about me, I love the outside. Don't forget hope and be astounded by hope. Hope is that first tree that buds in the spring. For me being outside in nature. I'm astounded sometimes at the beauty of it, and that gives me hope that God has got this, and we know he has it. Sometimes we need actual visual reminders of that as we move from fear to love. Like Sara said, this is not a one and done, this is a life time practice. We are brought along those waves by the Holy Spirit, by our loving God and by Christ. We need to just be able to place those fears on him. 

Amy J. Brown 27:35
As we close today, I just want to mention that we have a playlist we put out every month. The songs are curated to reflect the theme. If you would like to get the playlist with songs, specifically helping us with fear, make sure that you go to our website and sign up for our newsletter. We would love to send that to you. As I close, I'm going back to Henri Nouwen. He's been our guide today. I'm going to close with a quote, actually some scriptures he's put together and then a prayer. "Jesus says make your home in me and I make mine in you. Whoever remains in me, with me in them bears fruit in plenty. I've told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." Jesus is continually inviting us to live in his house of love. This prayer is from the next right thing by Emily P. Freeman. "Lord, unbound by time or place or gravity, you go ahead of us into an unknown future. You walk toward us with love in your eyes. You stand beside us when we find ourselves in unsure places. You sit next to us in silence and in joy. You watch behind us to protect our minds from regret. You live within us and lead from a quiet place. When you speak with gentleness, we won't ignore you. When you direct with nudges we move with ease. When you declare your love for us, we refuse to squirm away. When you offer good gifts, we receive them with gratitude. When you delay the answers, we wait with hope. We resist the urge to sprint ahead in a hurry or lag behind in fear. Let us keep company with you at a walking pace, moving forward together one step at a time. Help us to know the difference between being pushed by fear and led by love."

Amy J. Brown 29:41
Thanks for joining us this week on Take Heart. Our prayer each week is for your heart to be encouraged. We are grateful you're walking with us on this journey. Be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter at www.takeheartspecialmoms.com, and follow us on Instagram or Facebook @takeheartspecialmoms. If you have any questions or comments, follow the links in the show notes. We love to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening. Next week we are having a special podcast episode where we answer all your questions so be sure to tune in. Thank you.