Waking Up Me!

Fear is a very real thing. From a young age, I knew fear in the form of a phobia. I feared death. Not just my death, but specifically around darkness, emptiness, the end of life. I worried something would happen to my mother and I hated sleeping somewhere other than home. As I got older and my thought processes could take me down deep into the darkness of what if scenarios, I could end up in a panic attack. There were times that the most unusual situations lead to the worst ones. The kind where everything goes wonky, sight becomes a tunnel and then blackness overtakes you.  In the Bible, there are many verses written about fear because it's a problem as old as time. This week as I was preparing for what's coming in Sunday's service, this verse stood out to me, "There is no fear in love, but  perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not  been perfected in love." (1 John 4:18, ESV). The part that specifically spoke ...