Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. Do the thing you think you cannot do. Eleanor Roosevelt

Fear we’ve all felt it, and our fears have probably held us back. If we let it, fear will steal our destiny. Is it reasonable or unreasonable to have fears? It makes sense to fear what we don’t understand, to approach with caution, but to let it keep us from our goals, or keep us from making goals, does that make sense?

I think there is healthy fear and unhealthy fear. Healthy fear might keep us safe but if taken too far it becomes unhealthy fear. Every unreasonable fear probably has its roots in reasonable fear.

We are controlled because of fear, and we control others with fear. Do we sometimes want to teach people to respect things but instead we teach them to fear them? Franklin Roosevelt said, “The one thing we must fear is fear itself, for indeed if we allow it to, it will control us. If we confront it, we will master it.”

It has been said, “A wise bird knows that a scarecrow is simply an advertisement. It announces that some very juicy and delicious fruits are to be had for the picking. There are scarecrows in all the best gardens.” If we are wise perhaps we will treat scarecrows as if they are an invitation. If something makes us feel too small to achieve something – that is a scarecrow – letting us know beyond our fear is something we want, and worth going after.

We may have rational fears or irrational fears. If we all have a fear we call it rational, but if it is a strange fear we don’t share, we laugh at it.

Here are some strange fears: Chaetophobia is the fear of hairy people. Levophobia is the fear of objects on the left side of the body, dextrophobia is the fear of objects on the right side of the body, and auroraphobia is the fear of the northern lights.

I’ve never thought it would take courage to look at the northern lights. Some people who’ve never seen a stage they didn’t like will wonder about one of many people’s biggest fears, public speaking.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear. Franklin D. Roosevelt

We are all different and we might all have unique fears that hold us back. What if we looked our fear in the face and said, “You’re not going to control me, I will do what I have to do.” Courage isn’t not feeling fear; courage is facing our fears and going forward anyway.

Sometimes one of our biggest fears is facing what is in front of us. This might be why we get cold feet before we do something we really want to do. We hear about people being left at the altar. It happened on the day of my husband’s and my wedding.

Two couples were getting married earlier the same day, in the same church, in a double ceremony, and one of the grooms didn’t show up. The bride whose fiancé didn’t show up was still a witness for the couple that did get married. The minister was very glad to see me when I arrived.

I’ve often wondered about the groom that didn’t show up, did he make the best, or worst decision of his life that day? Was it fear or something else, if it was something else couldn’t he have let the bride know ahead of time?

We let fear control us in many ways. We don’t decide what we want for fear we might make a mistake. We dawdle along so we don’t have to take the next step. We don’t face up to situations how they really are, we don’t step on the scale, we don’t go see the doctor, and we don’t take a close look at our finances.

We don’t confront the problem that most needs confronted in our lives. If we do finally confront that problem we often find we can manage it, if we will face it and take the steps needed. Then we may wonder why it took us so long, it isn’t as hard as we thought it would be, and life is so much better when we get our fears in perspective.

Courage is more exhilarating than fear, and in the long run, it is easier. Eleanor Roosevelt

All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune make for a finer, nobler type of manhood. Theodore Roosevelt

Every time we face our fear, we gain strength, courage, and confidence in the doing. Theodore Roosevelt

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.