The silent whisper of fear: How grief spawns fear

One morning I open my email to see a message from my Dad, now, my dad usually sends really funny emails, sometimes political posts or what new road law is being instated. Not today, today this email reads (in my mind) like this "Hi boys, blah blah blah, found a mass in my neck, blah blah, will check up with doctor, love dad". I'll be honest, when I read this, I wasn't alarmed, sad or angry, I had complete and total peace, it was not me trying to be brave or to put on a front, it was just peace, true God sent peace.

That was about a month ago and since then I have talked with my dad, he seemed good and in high spirits. A couple of days ago I get an email from him, "hi guy's, just got news from the doctor and the mass is cancerous... Need chemo and treatment... Standing true on God's word, love dad."

This time the peace was not there, if you have ever been in an accident you may know the feeling that I'm talking about, the gut wrenching that I got from reading that word "cancerous" was like the moment you lose control and you know you are about to converge on impact, nothing and then all at once.

I was home alone when I got the news, I did not cry, I did not get angry, I simply sat there and thought. The quote came to mind that C.S. Lewis said "No one ever told me that grief would feel so much like fear." It was true, the grief of finally knowing the brutal reality of what that mass was was in fact like fear. Suffocating my thoughts to the point that I had to stop thinking about it, my emotions could not process the stark truth of what this meant. My dad, the one who I thought was invincible, now has cancer.

I was now confronted with this thing called grief, all of humanity have fallen under the weight of grief. Grief has a tendency to make you ask "why" where joy has the tendency to answer the "why's" in life.

But we often find ourselves at a crossing point in life when we encounter grief, asking the eternal questions of God, faith, life and so on. But for me I did not find myself asking these questions, I had already done that before with grief years ago. No, this time grief was not making me ask, grief was hiding me in my fear, hoping that I would not seek out God for any answers, no, this grief was wanting me all to itself.

The beautiful thing about being God's beloved is that He chases you, not allowing you to fall victim to the lies of the enemy. The scripture verse 2 Timothy 1:7 came to mind one day "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, love and a sound mind." I knew in that moment that I was free from the fear of grief, free to praise God for whatever happens!

Grief is not bad in and of its self, it is the enslaving ability of it that is evil, fear has captured many of you the same way it did me, but I want you all to know that you are not called to that fear, you are called to a place where grief will be no more, where the shadow of fear cannot touch those of us who are in the eternal light of Christ.

Do not listen to the whisper of fear but instead hear the cry of redemption, the song of grace and see the son of God robed in majesty, clothed in the fullness of His love and power.

Yes my dad has cancer, yes it is something to be taken seriously but it is not something that has rattled my faith, because my faith is not dependent on my success or health, it is dependent on Christ alone.

I know He is experiencing this with me because He was, after all, a man of many sorrows. So if fear visits you in the form if grief just remember that He crucified fear to the cross so that we would not have to bare it.