I’ve been discussing that I’ve had Fear as a part of my life until God healed me of it about 5 or 6 years ago.
I thought of a good example of how overly afraid I was, even at an early age.
When I was young, and my mother and father were still married, we lived in a small town in Northern Canada called, “Yellowknife”.
It had only one hardware store in it (at the time) and in this store it sold just about everything. From hammers to wristwatches.
One day my Dad had to go to the Hardware store and pick up some sort of gadget or another and invited my brother and I to go along.
Bro and I were wandering around this massive store (things seem “massive” where you’re a little girl) and looking at this and that. Even though Mom wasn’t with us, she had us trained to know that we “don’t touch things that belong to someone else”.
My brother wandered off to look at something, Dad was at the counter talking to the owner about some sort of “doo-hickey” and I had found a magnificent item, straight out of a magical Fair Land. I saw my first stereo system. It was so amazing, I seem to remember it was glowing.
And it had MUSIC coming out of it! I remember looking at the naked speakers and they were actually pulsing with the drum beat in the song.
I don’t remember what song was playing on that stereo system, but I definitely could “feel” the music coming out of it.
There are two things that always made me momentarily forget how incredibly terrified I always was, and music was one of them. Since, “I’ve got the music in me”, I just had to start dancing. Right there in the hardware store. I had “zoned out” and right into the music and the store melted away.
I didn’t even realise I was doing it , until …
I looked up into the face of one of the Salesmen who worked there. He was leaning on a shelf and watching me dance with a big smile on his face.
As I look back, down the tunnel of my memory, I can tell from his expression that he was just thinking, “What a cute little girl”.
I thought he was an “old” guy, but he was probably only a late teenager or maybe in his early 20’s.
This is when my sweet, little, childhood story turns into a nightmare. That’s when the Fear, that I had momentarily forgotten, came rushing back in. It was like being caught in a Tidal Wave of Fear and not being able to get your head above water to breath. I had been seen by this “man” and I felt like I had been caught doing the worst sin the world had ever invented.
In a panic and without checking with my older brother or father, I just ran out of the store and hid in the back of my Dad’s van, where I was found later..
When I walked into the door at home, Mom took one look at my face and turned to Dad and casually said, “How did it go at the Store?” while motioning her head toward me with a questioning look.
Dad responded equally calmly with, “Fine. Nothing unusual.” as he motioned his head back towards me and shrugged his shoulders.
(Like kids can’t see their parents making all those faces at each other)
I didn’t speak or eat for the rest of that day. And from that day forward, I absolutely refused to ever go anywhere near the Hardware store. In fact, I stopped going anywhere with Dad altogether, just in case he made an unscheduled stop at the Hardware store.
I was 6 years old at the time.
All of that personal agony, and having worried parents, just because a teenager saw me dancing next to a stereo.
We don’t have to physically be in a prison to be trapped in one. Fear. Loneliness. Hatred. Bitterness. Unworthiness. Denial. Addictions.
Prisons that have no walls but keep our souls and bodies locked up tighter than bars of steel. Because when your soul is in torment, how do you escape and where do you run to.
“For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of son-ship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.”
(Romans 8:15-16)
