How I Unravel When Fear Has Me Wound Tightly

Photo by Philip Estrada

If I had to give you a mental image of what my internal condition was last week, it’d be a giant ball of yarn so tightly wound that whatever it’s wound around has no chance of escape—not even a glimpse. That seems counterintuitive to the two months of being in the US for the bit of a furlough we’ve been on, but you can ask any missionary who travels during their time Stateside, and they’ll tell you that rest when you’re living out of a suitcase and sleeping in a different bed every couple of days or weeks is totally elusive. Our trip has been awesome in so many ways, and it’s been such a blessing to see so many people I haven’t seen in years. But hasn’t been typical of my times in the US which has had me a bit off-kilter.

Aside from navigating life in the US, Raúl and I have also been monitoring the situation in Honduras. For those of you who have some kind of an interest in Honduras, you may already know that the country has been experiencing wide-spread protests and upheaval since the end of April. If you don’t have an interest in Honduras, and you’re in the US, you probably don’t know at all. Some of those protests have seemed to be of the garden variety road blocks with burning tires that you can typically avoid without trouble. While I recognize that that sounds foreign and scary for some people, for seasoned missionaries, that’s barely a blip on the radar. But, amidst the usual, there have also been some incidents that have sparked some shock and pondering for me—one of those was the invasion of the airport by protesters. An acquaintance was at the airport that day and took videos while he was being carted all over the premises and experiencing tear gas and hearing Molotov cocktails go off. Another incident was the entrance to the US embassy being set on fire by delinquents who often infiltrate peaceful protesters. This has rendered an already unavailable embassy basically non-existent in terms of its citizens and in terms of people who had visa appointments. I can’t count how many times I’ve thought of God’s grace in allowing Raúl to get his visa last year, but at the same time, there are people we know of who have been affected adversely—years of waiting to get their permanent residency and their visa to go to the States only to have the door slammed in their faces when they finally had their visa appointment. But I have been informed that the embassy is supposed to be up and running again by next week. In addition to these happenings, a huge line of Dole tractor-trailers had their products stolen and were burned, causing Dole to pull their operations out of Honduras. That means jobs lost for so many. That hasn’t been the only instance of property damage as many, many businesses have been destroyed, damaged, and looted. Last week, it was reported that a clash between public university student protesters and military police resulted in open fire. There have also been reports of people being injured and of people dying in some of these ongoing clashes. I know that it sounds like a war zone. But many of these protests can be avoided by either staying home or by keeping an eye on what’s going on around your route of travel. Chatter among missionary groups has included both comments like, “I’ve never seen it this bad,” and “I don’t feel unsafe at all. This is nothing new. We just take precautions. This is no reason for me to leave.” And, truly both are right. And, just as tumultuous as one day may be in one area, the next day, it could be totally calm. For the moment, it seems things are calmer.

It’s not often that I publicly process how political unrest in Honduras affects me simply because the media tends to blow so many things out of proportion or not report anything at all. I’m from West Virginia, so I’m well-acquainted with what it’s like when your beloved home is often only known for negative things. West Virginia is a wonderful place, so it’s deeply unfair that we’re often only portrayed in stereotypical or one-sided ways. I feel the same way about Honduras. Honduras is beautiful. It’s full of special people, valuable souls. It’s more than the sum of its failures. Because of that feeling, many missionaries stay mum whenever any sort of upheaval happens because we truly aren’t fishing for worry from our supporters or comments about how dangerous our lives are or expressed desires that we leave. We do get it. Living in the midst of so much uncertainty can seem daunting when you’re not used to it. And human preservation instinct says to avoid getting used to it. But, human preservation almost always has to go out the window at least in some measure when you become a missionary to a new place. With all of that said, I want to also be transparent in saying that the idea of returning to the lingering anxiety in the air and the lack of convenience in getting around hasn’t appealed to me. It’s truly not a fear of violence. When I’m in my home, there is really no threat of harm at all. It’s how that lingering spirit of fear compounds many of the battles I’m already fighting.

Some of those battles are understandable. Last week, Raúl and I received word that Josuan, our long-time son who gives us gray hairs and wrinkles, had broken his leg and was in the hospital. He’s been bouncing between family members and roommates and the streets for the past several months, and I have to be honest that every time he’s back on the streets, I mentally steel myself for the worst while I also tell God, “I will not bury my son. I’m not going to do it. So I need You to take care of him even though he doesn’t deserve it, even though his own choices are leading him toward destruction.” It’s a primitive and maybe not theologically sound prayer. But, it’s what I’ve got. Some time during the week, Josuan disappeared from the hospital. This caused us to call everyone within his potential support system—people who could’ve helped him leave. No one had seen him. From the information we received, the hospital had called whenever they took him back for surgery, and no one had heard anything since. His family had gone to the hospital to look for him, and they couldn’t find him. His name was on the registries, but he was no where to be found. It’s a public hospital with few resources, so it wasn’t likely that they’d just handed him crutches, and he’d left, especially since we couldn’t verify that anyone had helped him. I started preparing myself for the worst—that he was in a coma (why else wouldn’t he have called for a week—so unlike him) or that he’d died on the operating table and that his body was in the morgue. This isn’t my first instance of wondering if Josuan was in the morgue. I’ve gone to look for him there myself before. And, in situations of emergencies or crises, my response is almost always the practical, the logical, and the calculated. Do what needs to be done. But I’m also a pre-griever. So while my outward response is practical, my inward response is on high alert that a big hit is coming and prodding me to process it now. When we were in the midst of all of this information and fielding messages from Josuan’s worried family and trying to find someone to send to the morgue to check (because, really, who wants that job?!), Raúl and I were also packing up to travel again. I could feel more and more strings wrapping tighter and tighter as my brain was pondering all the possibilities and questions until all of the sudden it wasn’t. It was immediate peace. I’ll be honest in saying that I hadn’t even asked for peace though I had told God earlier in the week, “Please don’t let me know about any crises until I need to know.” I had no new information for several hours after that. Someone had seen him. He had called my brother-in-law. He had shown up at Raúl’s business. His leg wasn’t really broken. He had just been banged up. With that kind of a conclusion, it could seem like getting wound up was an overreaction. But, I haven’t met a single person who has worked with street youth who hasn’t buried someone. We have no idea why some people survive more than their quota and why others only get one chance.

I can’t tell you how many times in my life as a missionary where I’ve felt like I desperately needed a win. Something, anything small even, to validate all the sacrifice and heartbreak. I wouldn’t be the only one to tell you that sometimes you just don’t get that when you need it. If anything, those are often the times when some other fire needs put out and some other need gets heaped on. At times, being a missionary has felt like an ongoing exercise in failure. That sounds melodramatic, and it is. There are people we have helped. There are relationships that we’ve developed. There are people who have received salvation in part from our witness, and others who have been discipled. But for every one of those, it seems there are double or triple the cases of losses.

As a six on the Enneagram, as Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile say in their book, The Road Back to You, my deadly sin is fear. Sixes crave stability and security. It’s often what motivates us in life more than anything else. Can we acknowledge how laughable it is that someone who craves stability lives without ever knowing how much money will be available to live off of in a country where keeping your word is not only optional, it’s usually a rarity? Does it make you marvel as it does me that God would call someone so desiring of security to live in a place where you absolutely do not count money in public, never leave your doors unlocked, can only enter certain neighborhoods if you know at what point you need to flash your lights, and just generally have to be constantly aware of your surroundings? Yet, knowing that God is always good but is not tame, it makes perfect sense. How can we have a full life in the emptiest of places? He promises in Isaiah 58:11:

“And the Lord will continually guide you, and satisfy your soul in scorched and dry places. And give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.”

Some versions say “a spring that never runs dry.” How is that even possible? It doesn’t start with the outward circumstances. What better environment of discomfort to best learn what divine security is? What if your security starts out being in what you do, how successful you are, what tangible results you give forth? Honestly, I feel like I may just be on an eight-year journey of stripping away my false self that wants to depend on accomplishments. And that brings me to this confession—I think the greatest fear that has been plaguing me in all of my summer pondering and questions is this: fear of failure.

Before I left Honduras, I told God that I could not return the same. Raúl and I could not return to doing ministry how we’ve been doing it. We’ve been doing the best that we can. But our egos like to be useful—sometimes in spite of what our spirits need which is to be surrendered and needy at His feet. I’ve been reading the book When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, and my guess is that I’ve made every mistake in the book. I’ve certainly caught on pretty quick and learned many of those lessons along the way. Course correction has been an ongoing thing. But as Raúl and I have been taking stock on whether we’re making a difference, and if we are, what are the ways that we’re making a lasting difference, I am finding that what we think is helping often is not. If we’re honest, our good intentions and good works can become a substitute for God’s supernatural overcoming. We can get so easily caught up in the what we can dos, that we lose sight of the importance of the what we can’t dos. If we’re honest, our missions work can become the very distraction that leads us away from taking authority over the territory that God is giving us. But, for the longest time, rather than catching on to my need to embrace the mystery of all that He can do and wants to do in spite of the ongoing, never-ending trainwrecks, I’ve been nursing the wound that I’m a failure.

When you’re pursuing what you feel is the next right “ministry” step and fielding unending expectations and pressures from others, when things go south, it can feel like the failures never stop. The voices around you are never pleased. The needs are never quelled but rather amplify. It makes you wary that God isn’t going to further your next endeavor either. It can feel like God isn’t backing you or like He’s purposefully leading you toward failure. So what if He is? I don’t say that sarcastically. I say that pensively because I am seeing that I sometimes have to be overwhelmed by the futility of my own human efforts over and over again to reach a desperate, un-halting desire for the divine and supernatural intervention of the Holy Spirit. What if the disconnect is in what the end goal was? I was after visible growth and seeing lives transformed by encountering Jesus. I was hoping for my kids to thrive and reach their full potential within the Kingdom of God. I’d like to actually have something to write home about. Don’t get me wrong—it would be unloving not to hope for those things. I love these people; I crave God’s best for them. But, within my own heart, I don’t think God was after creating a Super Missionary who has badges of honor and numbers of converts embroidered on her cape. In missions and really even in life, success or failure can’t be defined by numbers or even necessarily tangible, visible results. It has to be measured by how entwined our hearts are with Jesus’, with how much devotion we pursue relationship with Him, and with what reckless abandon we obey Him. There is no fear of failure when there is perfect love. What exactly is there to lose when He is the goal above all else? How can we go wrong in pursuing someone who fiercely pursues us first? It isn’t possible to fail at surrender. And when we do, we return to knowing what our real role is in ministry and even just in life. We aren’t the saviors. How freeing! But the truth is that we also have more authority than we think we do.

For the last couple of years, I think I have been doing my best not to take up too much space. Not too much space in people’s lives. Not too many needs that Raúl and I long for the Body of Christ to help us tend to. Not too many calls for responsibility. Some of that has been because I come from a very considerate family—we were trained not to bother others and to always consider the other person’s needs and feelings of great importance. The problem with being so accommodating is that you can also minimize what you actually have to offer and can lose yourself entirely. Some of my shrinking into corners has also been from self-preservation—see, missionaries still have some of that! Over the years, I have fielded so many accusations that I’m just too different within the Honduran culture that taking the stand to be who I really am takes a feat of bravery that often feels beyond me. The sad thing about it is that I can often recognize that what I have to offer in counsel and loving discipline and compassionate accountability is actually needed. But who wants that when it’s easier to get a quick fix remedy? Raúl and I have often been bullied by suspicions that we aren’t spiritual enough by the same people who have no problem asking us for money in their time of need. Honestly, if you don’t make waves, you avoid another beating. Some of the not taking up space has also been a desire to not be like so many of the controlling, territorial tendencies we’ve seen in ministries driven by hierarchy. We don’t want the people around us to feel like our love and friendship is dependent on a hierarchical model of helpless obedience. We absolutely want the people around us to learn to seek God’s voice for themselves, deeply and personally. That doesn’t mean that wise counsel isn’t important; it just means that we should never be the only voice that God uses to speak to them all the time. And, they should know fully that we can miss it, and they have the right and the calling to seek God directly even about the things that we’re advising them about. But, I am recognizing that my recoiling and shying away in life and ministry has also trickled into how I respond within the spiritual realm. My fear of failure and fear of hurt have kept me from forging forward with the security that I have a Strong Tower, Mighty Redeemer not just defending me but surging forward with fiery restoration. It’s impossible to offensively take a territory while living defensively.

If I am shrinking back, it needs to be into His loving arms and not into the projections that He is waiting for me to screw up. If I’m taking up little space, it needs to be to give more space to His abundant presence. If I’m in need of care and safeguarding, it has to come from closing myself off into the secret place with Jesus rather than building walls around my heart that keep even Him out. It is only from this place of security that facing the fear of failure head-on is possible. It is only from the stability of the unflinching hands of the Father that I can walk forward into all that He is calling me to be regardless of the voices making demands and forcing expectations. When I look at the upheaval in Honduras, I have no answers. When I watch the caravans of desperate, poor people streaming toward the US, I have no solutions. When I am disappointed once again by a poor life choice by one of my kids or when I have no idea what else has to happen before one of my kids makes the decision to truly run after Jesus, whatever it takes, I am overwhelmed by how little I can tangibly do. But, do you know that when I close my eyes in prayer for Honduras and for those who have branded their names on my heart—for better or for worse—I don’t ever see an image of God simply hovering over the deep of Honduras. I don’t see Him warring by Himself or even see angels marching forward on His behalf. What I almost always see is an image of how He is calling me to spiritually fight, what that looks like in worship, in proclaiming His name over every impossibility. In those moments of prayer, I cannot begin to describe the surge of authority that I feel rise up in my spirit even as I weep with the broken heart of a Father still calling His lost children to His heart. He calls us all to be just as empowered in the secret as we want to be in the tangible.

So, if you’re feeling today like that tightly wound ball of string, take a minute. Rather than finding something else to busy yourself with, find a minute to unravel yourself with the Father whatever that looks like for you. Perfect love casts out all fear.