Fear thou not…

“I’m talking about your pants,” the man said with a touch of irritation. “They look good on you. They show off your hips and legs.”

“I’m complimenting you! Can’t a guy give a girl a compliment anymore? You should be flattered.”

~~”Wild” by Cheryl Strayed

“Mom was stalked at the swap meet today.”  My daughter Marlee said at the dinner table. “I thought she was going to get kidnapped.”

I’ve always tried to live a Christ centered life.  But the last few months I’ve put more of a concentrated effort into accomplishing this goal.

An unexpected perk of putting Christ first–really first–is that the underlying fear that has plagued me most of my life has softened.  The shell of distrust I’ve hidden beneath has cracked wide open.

“It mattereth not what becomes of me.”  I told the Lord in prayer.  “I just want to love all of thy children and go about doing good.”

I felt better, bolder and braver with a greater capacity to love my neighbor as myself, than ever before.  I felt whole.

That is, until Saturday.

I tried to brush off the sense of uneasiness and violation I felt after leaving the swap meet.  Tried to tell myself it wasn’t that bad.  Maybe the man that had followed me around with an overbearing disregard for personal boundaries and unwelcome advances was just trying to be friendly.  Perhaps he thought it complimentary. Perhaps he believed I would be flattered.

But–validated by Marlee’s observation at dinner–the stone I had worked all day to dislodge from the pit of my stomach returned.  And when night fell I lay awake in my bed.

I felt my desires to be out in the world, interacting with and loving God’s children, dissolve in a flood of memories.  Memories of other moments in my life when I felt stalked, pursued, ogled, trapped and violated.

“I can’t do it Lord.”  I said.  “I can’t trust enough to love enough.”

I was then reminded of a dream–a dream I wrote of in an earlier post— where I, encased in a bubble, was held in the palm of God’s hand.

“Fear thou not.” He spoke gently to me in my dream. “For I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

Remembering this truth I see that though there have been many times–way too many–when I’ve felt stalked, pursued, ogled, trapped and violated, each time God has blessed me with the intuition or the intervention needed to be kept safe.

Or, with the ability to overcome.

I still have to fight to keep my heart softened and to withstand the temptation to feel angry or afraid.  Because I do get angry.  I sometimes feel afraid.

And no, I am not flattered.

But it’s a fight I’ll continue to make.

Because I want to go about doing good, traveling the world and showing love to all of God’s children. He has placed that seed into my heart.  A seed I never dared dream before.

And I intend to make it happen.

But I don’t intend to give up treasure hunting–even though I swore off it on Saturday–because I’m still obsessed with all things vintage and it’s fun to run into nostalgic goodies like this exact duplicate of my Senior prom dress. Which I guess is now somewhat vintage too.