I visited with my cousin yesterday. We started to talk about scary movies. He said that he didn’t like getting too much into that stuff because he didn’t want to invite anything like that into his life. It scared him. I told him that the occult can’t hurt you, unless you give it power by believing in it, but you really have to believe that it doesn’t have power over you.
When I was a little girl, I would see unusual entities all the time. I didn’t know what I was seeing. Sometimes, they would scare me because I didn’t know what they were and that was fear of the unknown, but also because they seemed to be ghosts and I didn’t know if they could hurt me or not. Now that I am older, when I see all the things I saw as a child, I understand what I am seeing, but I usually choose to ignore it. I know that when I see something that there’s no reason to be afraid because God is the only entity that has power over my life. I don’t fear evil; I just have faith in God. I don’t give evil power that I believe only belongs to God.
After I spoke with my cousin, I talked to him about being a horror writer and I told him that demons, ghosts, and the paranormal weren’t what really scares people anyway. I told him that what really scares people is that which they cannot control and losing those that they love the most. I told him to look at his own actions and motivations. When he tries to protect his adult children from the world, he fears a world that he cannot control and losing the children he loves the most in this world.
Fear isn’t one of the seven deadly sins, but it is a complicated feeling. It can alert us to danger, but it can also drive us to act irrationally because of our desires. There is a fine line between healthy fear and fear that leads to sin. I guess it is something I have learned from having anxiety. I am learning that with God I have no reason to fear; He is always with me and will always take care of me. However, even though I have no reason to fear, I can’t change my base physical nature. My body still has anxiety symptoms and when they come up, I should listen to my body. It is trying to tell me something.
I’ve learned it’s okay to feel fear, but I can’t let it replace the power that God has over my life.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
