What is your worst fear? What dread winds and tightens cords of anxiety through your chest when you consider the worst? What worry sits invisible under your skin, but sinks and spreads to your core?
We all have one of these fears. I do. Well, I did. We each fear different things. For some, your fears are physical, like snakes, spiders, or storms. For some, your fears are ideological, being alone, being unloved, or being a failure. For some, like me, you fear tragedies, death, sickness, or abandonment. Unfortunately, not all fears can be run from.
3 years ago I moved to New York City chasing the call of God on my life. These years have come with indescribable adventures and unimaginable experiences, but have left me well acquainted me with fear.
In the beginning of 2016 I was robbed at gunpoint walking home from a pharmacy. As the barrel of my assailants gun was pressed up against my neck, fear introduced himself to me in an abrupt and powerful way. Of course we had met before in small ways, but never like this. Never this consuming. But to me our first real encounter was nothing compared to what was to come.
In the months after the robbery fear dug himself into the block between the pharmacy and my home. I was forced to pay his toll every time I took that path. But the more I saw him the less I had to pay. Soon he was driven away all together. To this day fear follows me around as I walk dark city streets alone, but time has shifted him from a demanding master to a distant stalker.
I explain this to legitimize my claim that I know what fear feels like. I know what it is like to see family members die of cancer and hear my mother explain she shares their affliction. I know what it’s like to sit in an emergency room after my father was rushed off in an ambulance dancing with death. And I know what it’s like to lose your home and fear never making friends again, fear never having a home.
All of these fears, no matter how striking, fell a little short of ‘worst’. No, that one grew over time.
The day I said goodbye to my grandparents, on my way to Love Field Airport, in anticipation of the flight moving me to New York, my worst fear was conceived. As I wrapped my arms around each of my dad’s parents, I was stricken with the idea that this might be the last time I see them.
This thought took root and grew. It wrapped the aforementioned cords of anxiety through each vein in my chest. This fear was now my ‘worst,’ that my grandparents might die while I am in New York. That I would live with the guilt of missing their last years. That they would die 1,500 miles away.
In the spring of 2016, as I continued to recover internally from my misfortune earlier in the year, my grandfather had a stroke. A bad one. There was a good chance he wasn’t going to make it through the day, and an even lower chance he would survive the month. I haven’t wept that hard in years.
Only a miracle could save him now. It did. Even though his body laid weathered with over 80 years of age, it was given the strength to survive the surgery, and eventually the harrowing and uncertain month to come. God preserved his life.
Within a few weeks I was a able to fly home and be with my grandpa. As I touched down in Love Field, I was reminded of all of the weekends in the car with my grandparents along the fence of this particular airport. We were awestruck as the planes took off just yards above our heads. I only dreamed of being in one of those planes someday. Now I was gliding over that same parking lot, nearing my grandfather’s hospital room.
The first time I saw him after his stroke my throat shut. One of the strongest, kindest, and most loving men I had ever met laid motionless, and strained his weakened voice to welcome me into the room. It was a miracle for him to be alive, but I struggled for the next year and a half with this incomplete healing.
Some days were better than others. Some he was mostly lucid as he dipped in and out of naps. Honestly, the napping was nothing new. (I wrote that last sentence with a smile, remembering all the times he fell asleep mid-sentence before his stroke.) But other days were miserable. The worst was when he didn’t recognize me, because I knew parts of his mind were there, but those days it seemed as if the real James Wesley was elsewhere.
He was in this purgatory for over a year and a half. Not all healed. Not all whole. Evidence of a miracle in a still broken body. I spent many days between the stroke and his death angry with God for not making a decision one way or the other. But with tears in my eyes, I can tell you I am thankful for this past couple years. I am thankful for the time I had with him. I am thankful God allowed me to stretch my grief over two years instead of a few moments. I’m thankful for his faithfulness in the pain.
So that’s it. That is why I spoke in the past tense about my worst fear. Because I have lived through mine, and I am still reeling from it. In late October my grandpa went to be with the Lord and finally became whole again. I had the unique privilege of holding him in my arms, and kissing his forehead in the moments just before his last breath. “Goodbye papa, I love you” gripped the sides of my mouth as it struggled to find itself out in the open through my tears.
As I flew to NYC from Love Field this last time, I began to realize how much room I had given fear. As this portion of my heart was emptied, since my anxiety no longer had anything to feed on, I was reminded of the faithfulness of God.
The last year and a half fear had slowly chipped away my wonder of the city. But as I peered from the window toward my home reaching into the clouds, my heart leapt at its sight for the first time in over 18 months. That morning I had left Love Field, but I will never forget my experiences there.
But most of all I will never forget God’s faithfulness. I will never forget the way my shepherd held me close through the valley of the shadow of death. I will never forget that it is beautiful that His ways are higher than mine, and not an inconvenience.
I will never forget that God is bigger than my greatest fears.
