Fear

It's been a day full of anxiety. It usually doesn't take anything big to trigger my panic; something as small as a fleeting comment is enough to get my heart racing and my head spinning. Usually I try to pretend that nothing is happening and take my thoughts to a different area, but today it was hard. What tipped the scales today was something small indeed; a seconds long commercial letting me know that a cable channel would be showing something called Nostradamus 2012 this evening.

You see, even though I am a Christian who believes that God is everything good, I am terribly afraid of the end times. It isn't something new. I've been scared of this since I was young. I don't like to think of the pain and suffering of some, and the biggest fear is that God will say that He never knew me because I didn't believe or do enough.

The earliest memories I have of feeling this fear involve trying to avoid looking at any magazine covers when at the grocery store with my parents. One look at a Weekly World News cover was enough to make my stomach turn. The first legitimate panic attack I can remember was when I was in my early teens and saw some news special covering a woman who had psychic premonitions of catastrophic world events happening in 1996. Then there were the ridiculous talks that certain relatives had about stockpiling goods in preparation for the year 2000. I was afraid of that one despite the fact that I knew it to be a ridiculous conspiracy theory type thing, but it didn't make my fear go away. The most recent one, before the 2012 hubub, was talking with ignorant people sharing with me an email they had received revealing that Obama would be the antichrist if elected. I knew this to be the product of racism and ignorance, but still had fear.

Now, with this newest fear of the end, I am well aware that it is based on faulty history at best. I've talked with my dad about it, seeing as he knows more about both history and the bible than I do, and he assures me that I shouldn't be afraid of any certain day. I myself know that the bible says no one will know the day or hour. Even with all this knowledge, my irrational fear is no less real. It seems as though I cannot avoid the references to this year, this date.

There's a part of me that doesn't want to miss out on anything. I feel like there is a lot of life that I have yet to experience. I want to finish something, to succeed, to realize dreams. It sort of fits in with the idea that I would not be good enough for God to take in the end. It's something I had recently discussed in therapy, and know to be an insecurity based on falsehoods, but the thoughts still come on certain days...like today. I would like it to be enough to motivate me into doing the things I want or need to do, but fear has never been a great motivator for me.

I think that what I need to fight fear with is love. I need to get back to church, back into a feeling of community. I don't know why it seems so hard to do, but I've been away for much too long. Now I just need to decide whether to stay with the church my sisters attend, with all the emotional pain it reminds me of, or go church shopping. I think I'll type through that one tomorrow.