Facing My Fears

We all have fears. And the problem with these fears is that we feed them all too often. We tend to think that it’s normal to behave this way.. because it’s almost like second nature to take our fears and let them consume us. It’s happened to me before, plenty of times. I feared doing something because I didn’t want to fail. And since I feared failure, I told myself I was one. And then guess what? It was like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Well now, here I am, and I am facing a fear of mine. It’s something I have feared all my life and I am choosing to work towards overcoming it. I guess as I get older and more mature, my focus has changed. I really want to be the best that I can be.. for myself, my family, my future family, my peers, my friends, and to even strangers. I really want to rid myself of my fears, especially since fear is just a feeling. It’s literally the same thing as feeling happy, feeling important, feeling proud. We take a feeling and we run with it. If it is a good feeling, it is often followed by positive things. But when it’s a bad feeling, it’s like a domino effect and suddenly negative after negative starts taking place. It makes sense. When you hear how your “energy” is what you attract, it is totally true in my opinion. Positive people attract positive things. Or maybe they just see the positive in all things? Whatever it is, being negative, whether it’s sad or mad or fearful, is never a good thing. So to be better, I want to remove the negatives. And one of the things that weighs me down most is this fear that I have had all of my life. I fear death. I fear my life ending and there being nothing else left. I fear being 6 feet under and everything about me is just gone. When the physical ends, I fear that it all ends. I try so so hard to believe that our spirit lives on. I really do. But I am obviously fooling myself because whenever I have a “spell” I call it, I completely throw that out the window. Since I was very young, I have always had panic attacks about dying. I cannot tell you how or when they started, but I do know that it happens when I am alone. Completely alone. I actually remember (now as I type this) one of the first times I had a panic attack was after watching a movie with my parents when I was about 5 years old. I wish I remembered the name of it but I do remember a scene quite vividly. I remember seeing people die by turning into stone, and seeing how lifeless and empty they seemed. I saw that once your body dies, everything ends. I am pretty sure that this was a religious movie, and I just remember my takeaway was that death is something we should fear. It seemed unfair, painful, and wrong. And since then, I have always lived in fear. It kind of makes me feel weird saying that I am living and yet I am in fear of dying. We all die, physically, no matter what. So why worry about it? I cannot change it. I cannot do anything to make it better. But maybe that is partially why I fear it. Because it is out of my control? And it still, to me, seems unfair. Like when our physical life ends, it’s just over. I try so hard to wrap my head around the idea of a spirit that lives on. I try so hard to find my religious beliefs. I am an extremely positive and hopeful person 99% of the time, but yet, my drawback is that I am not spiritual whatsoever. I try to pray often, but I sometimes wonder what I am doing when I do it. I have attended church, I have gotten extremely involved with a few of them actually, but I never feel that connection. Growing up, I went to church every single Sunday. I attended Sunday School. And in junior high, I even went through a long process of becoming Confirmed. I attended LOMC (Lutheran Outdoor Ministries Center) camps and have sang dozens of religious songs. I feel as if I have tried it all. You would think that being around spiritual people my entire life, that I would just... get it. But I never have. I have never found that relationship with God or with anything spiritual for that matter. I have always questioned my beliefs. I have always questioned everything about religion. I hate admitting that, I really do. I am embarrassed, actually. But I have truly never understood it. I’ve read many parts of the Bible, and I still don’t have that connection. I guess I sort of gave up after a while, and just accepted the fact that I would never be a spiritual being that is close with God. And since then, I haven’t changed one bit. I still live in fear of death. I still feel as if something is missing when it comes to my spirituality. It’s something I struggle with constantly and I am not sure if I will ever understand it. The panic attacks that I have occur every few weeks, and when they pass, I just move on. I think about them and even ask myself “Why am I doing this?” but I never have answers. I can never put my finger on why I am unable to make a spiritual connection with anything. And why I live in fear of death. I am such a strong personal mentally, and I am so positive! I’m thankful for that, but I cannot imagine where I would be if I had God in my life. Last fall when I lived in Georgia, where religion is extremely important, I really thought I would find the answers. I became a Sunday School Mentor for 3rd graders, I got heavily involved with the church I attended, and yet, I still felt the same. I felt fake. I felt like I was pretending to be close to God and pretending to be religious almost. It never made sense to me and since then, I have sort of been lost with what to do. It is my goal to do some soul searching, to dig deep and really get to the root of this. I want to have a relationship with God, I just need to change. Even though I am unsure of what needs to change, I am going to dedicate myself to finding out how I can find that relationship with God that I have been seeking my entire life. Pray for me.