Frozen in Fear?

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this update: The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and the icicles have dissolved into tears. In fact, everything that was iced over yesterday is weeping now, crying great tears of joy as we creep out of our deep freeze. 

And while it is by no means warm outside, compared with yesterday, things seem almost tropical today. 

Bizarre, yes.

But I'll take this turn of bizarreness over the ice-blitz of the past few days. 

Everything that stopped the world in its tracks over the past few days is now but a puddled memory, so non-threatening it seems almost absurd.

It would be an apt analogy for fear, wouldn't it?

Fear freezes us in our tracks, fusing us in place. We are immobilized, unsure which steps we take will ultimately lead us to fall. 

Falling would mean failure.

Falling would mean pain.

Falling could be fatal.

And so we freeze.

But what freezes us? 

In the end, will we find it only to be a puddle?

In the end, will we find that we stayed in our own seeming safety when there really was no reason to fear? That it was merely a short time, a short blast of a reminder to take stock and be aware, rather than simply charging ahead in recklessness. 

Maybe instead, we should slow down, appreciate what we are given.

Each blessing we have is a gift, yet we often barrel forward without thought.

Selfish in our single-mindedness and avoiding anything that makes us fearful.

And until those fears overwhelm us, we allow them to build until they overwhelm, a slow drip that seems inconsequential.

A slow drip that will puddle and, if we allow it, freeze over into something immobilizing, maybe even dangerous.

I'm trying to heed my own advice as I write this––trying to lookout the window at our great thaw and realize that many of my own personal fears are those puddles. 

Trying to remember that I needn't freeze in fear, but rather be careful. Even if my reminder to be careful is simply in reference to remembering to reach out when I worry, rather than trying to control everything.

Don't freeze––and don't freeze people out.