I have had several affairs with fear. Ours is a love-hate kind of relationship. We flirt and fall in and out of love faster than the speed of light. I have always threatened to leave him, and he has always laughed in my face; you know, the sarcastic kind of laugh.
I had made up my mind; I was leaving him for good, until I had a conversation with Tyler, my friend’s daughter.
“Esther, you are going where”? Asks three year old Tyler. “I am going to town”, I respond. “You are going with who”? She continues to prod. “I am going alone”, I answer. “You are not going and me”? She inquires. “No, Tyler, I am not going with you”, I inform her.
Clearly disappointed that not for the first time I seem not to go anywhere with her, she shrugs her shoulders and prophesize, so I think anyway. “Well the car is going to knock you, the dog will bite you, the police will catch you curfew and then they will beat you.”
“Oh, are all those things going to happen to me in one day?” I ask pretending to be scared. “Yep, they will”, she happily says as she walks away from me.
I laugh at the absurdity of her prophesy, but I must admit that as I cross the insanely busy and congested streets of Kampala, I can’t help but remember her prophecy of doom. I imagine a car knocking me down and a random dog biting me- anything seems possible in my beautiful city.
When I finally arrive home and in one piece, I sigh deeply and thank God for protecting me.
As I reflect on my day, I think about how we have let fear stop us from doing what we would like to do, and going places where we thought we ought to go. At three years, Tyler uses it as a weapon to make me stay home if she won’t go to town with me. (I almost cancelled my plans to go to town, because I thought, “what if she is right?”)Sounds quite funny, right? I bet you are thinking about the times that irrational fear has stopped you from doing whatever it is that you wanted to do.
How many times have I missed out on opportunities because I feared that I wasn’t good enough, that someone else deserved it and I didn’t? Or because I envisioned that I will be told no? That two lettered seemingly little word is so terrifying. Many dreams have been crushed for the fear of being told no. Many of us have given up on our hopes and dreams because we are afraid of being rejected.
This year, I resolved to work on this, and like Joyce Meyer’s latest sermon series, I decided to do it afraid. In January, I entered a contest for a radio mentorship program, with hands quivering and full of doubt, I sent in my audio recording. I made it the second round of the competition.
We were tasked with talking about a topic that the station selected for us. I was told to talk about vegetables. Old fear crept up on me again, whispering bitter nothings; my nerves were such a wreck I couldn’t for the life of me make a meaningful sentence. I was so nervous I couldn’t form a proper sentence! I failed to make it to the third round of the contest.
I could have let fear mock at me for such a failure, but this time round, I refused to beat myself about it. Instead, I patted myself on the back; I had tried. After that, I have entered several minor contests, I have not merged winner in any of them-yet. But I am proud of the fact that I am steadily moving out of my comfort zone and facing my fear of being judged by strangers.
I also quit my job after a year of flirting with the thought. It was a scary thing for me to do. There are days that I think I made the worst mistake of my life. Who does that in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic? And yet I did. Most of the time, I am confident that I did the right thing, but the fear of the unknown and the uncertainty still sneaks up on me.
Do I have a plan of what I want to do next? Yes I do, and I am already working in the direction of where I want to go. While the feeling of uncertainty is unavoidable, I am glad that steadily, I am learning to face my fears head on.
Daily, I face the battle between me and fear, of who wins custody of me. I desire to be fearless, but fear is always flirting with me, trying to wink at me with the goodies that he thinks I will miss in my comfort zone.
I refuse to give in and I am devotedly following Taffi Dollar’s advice, “Start now. Start where you are. Start with fear. Start with pain. Start with doubt. Start with hands shaking. Start with voice trembling. Start and don’t stop. Start where you are and with what you have. Just start.”
Free to Fly 