My brother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer right before Christmas, and is now in the thick of the battle. His prognosis is good, but it’s going to be a rough few months ahead. Of course, this has caused me to think back to when I was first diagnosed with cancer, and I have always said that it was harder emotionally than physically. I still believe that to be true. Whether it’s cancer, or some other challenge, fear is often a part of the equation that can compound our problems. But when we can overcome our fears, we are free. Today I put down a few of my thoughts on overcoming fear:
Overcoming Fear
When I was a young girl I dreaded report card time or parent/teacher conferences, because I knew I would get a huge lecture and punishment from my parents who expected my best efforts. The conclusion my father came to was that I was being lazy. I knew that laziness wasn’t the real reason for my lackluster grades, but, honestly, I could not figure out why I wasn’t simply putting forth a little more effort to produce better grades. I knew I could do better. As I got older my grades gradually went up, and finally in college, when no one saw my grades but myself, I proved to be a good student.
After years of reflection, I sought deeply to understand myself better, and I contemplated the feelings I had as a young girl. I wanted to determine why I was so unwilling to put my full effort into school. Finally, I realized that it was fear. I had always wanted to believe that I could get As in any subject if I tried hard enough, but, I told myself that I was only willing to put forth minimal effort, and that was why I was under-performing. That theory brought me some measure of comfort.
So why didn’t I just try harder, when I lived in constant worry of displeasing my parents because of my poor grades? Because something I feared even more than a scolding from my parents was possibly discovering that I wasn’t really as smart as I thought I was! I was scared to risk trying my best. Some call it fear of failure, but I think it was fear of truth. Letting myself and my parents think that I was smart, but lazy, was better than the possibility of discovering I was not that smart.
I was only slightly more confident in my running abilities. I was a good distance runner, and ran on the Track and Cross-country teams in high school. My dad was so excited when I won, and it felt good for my parents to be proud of me, so, winning races became very important to me. I needed that affirmation that I was good at something. My self-confidence hinged greatly on how I placed in races. I started running before school, as well as going to my practices after school, to get in better shape. My hard work and some natural ability paid off and I began winning almost every race. When I won, I felt on top of the world. When I lost, or got a slow time, I was devastated.
Running was an emotional roller coaster for me, and I became so nervous that my sleep was distracted and I couldn’t eat for hours before races or I would be sick when I was done. Race days were misery, but I didn’t want to quit because it was the one thing I was really good at.
There is a quote I like that says, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” That’s how I felt about track. I prayed a lot about my running, and visualized myself in races doing my very best. I continued to run well through high school and got a track scholarship for college.
By the time I was in college I was better at dealing with my anxiety over races. And despite the fact that the competition was stiffer, and that my scholarship depended on my performance, I felt more calm and confident than when I was younger. I knew that I was still valuable as a person no matter how I performed in my races.
Gaining a closer relationship with my Heavenly Father through personal scripture study and prayer during college helped me to gain that much needed self-esteem boost. Putting my running in proper perspective actually helped me to get the best out of myself because I wasn’t running with as much fear.
Fear comes in many forms and is something that everyone has felt and will feel throughout their lifetime. Fear can cripple our development at best, and destroy our faith and self-esteem at its worst. Fear is what comes before disobedience to commandments, loss of personal integrity, and loss of faith.
People who are fearful are not as capable of withstanding peer pressure or recognizing truth. We learn from the scriptures that “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
There are many things we fear throughout our lives, but they usually come from one of a few categories. “Fear of failure” is certainly the category that I would put my Track experiences in. When we are afraid to try something for fear that the outcome could damage our self-esteem or our reputation with others, or some other undesirable consequence, then we are fearing failure.
“Fear of truth” means that we don’t want to know more about something because that knowledge may not be something we like, or want to know about, or follow. It may make us feel guilty, or responsible to act in a way that is hard for us. “Fear of truth” inhibits how deeply we will search into finding truth, because we don’t want to learn something that might rattle us from the safety of what we want to believe.
“Fear of man” is another fairly universal fear. “Man” in this case is referring to mankind, or all people. Fear of man comes into play when we are too concerned with what other people, or the world in general, may think of us. “Fearing man” leads to making poor decisions in an effort to gain worldly acceptance instead of doing what we really believe is right.
When I was 21 I went on a mission for my church in Australia. I immediately noticed that when we spoke to people about religion, they usually did not want to speak with us. In fact, it seemed to me that we were just going around bugging everyone. I was sensitive to this and didn’t want to bother people. It took me a few months to realize that the important message we were sharing was so valuable that it was okay if we annoyed a few people in the process of trying to find those of God’s children who were ready for it. With stronger faith, gained from the increased scripture study and prayer that was a normal part of my day as a missionary, I overcame my fear of approaching people to talk about the gospel. I was experiencing some of that “perfect love” for people, spoken of in the scriptures, which “casteth out all fear”.
Even when your faith is strong, you can still experience overwhelming fear. I have never been more afraid than when I was 37 years old, strong in my beliefs, secure in myself, my marriage, and a happy mother of four beautiful children. One day a doctor told me something that nobody has ever been able to take back. He told me that I had “incurable” metastatic breast cancer that had spread to my bones.
I went forward with aggressive treatment, chemotherapy which made me so sick I was hospitalized for about a month, radiation, and several surgeries and drugs.
I never doubted that God loved me and my family, but I was so sad at the thought that my husband and children would be left without me. The worry I felt for my family was a crushing weight for me, and caused many sleepless nights. I wasn’t sure if Heavenly Father knew how much my family really needed me.
During treatment I did my best to exercise faith. It was all I had because there were so many reasons to be fearful. I prayed for peace constantly, then went about doing everything I could to have the Spirit in my life. I played uplifting music in our house, exercised when I had the strength, and practiced the piano more than ever before in my life. I was amazed at the power of positive music to sooth my soul. I needed to “feast” daily on the words of Christ to help calm the constant worry that came into my mind almost immediately when I wasn’t thinking of something else. So I read my scriptures every night before going to sleep.
I prayed a lot. When I was too sick or weak to get out of bed, or when I was alone at the hospital, I continued to pray between sleeping. When I drove the hour it took to go for chemotherapy, I developed a habit of keeping the radio off and praying the whole way up and back in the quiet of my car. I felt a very real and comforting warmth of Heavenly Father’s love for me in answer to my cries for peace and strength.
I have never fought harder to obtain peace than while I was battling cancer. Finally scans showed no evidence of disease in my body, something that the doctors said would not happen. Even when I was officially in a remission, and my body was getting stronger, my spiritual battle continued. Fear of the unknown has been a mind-spinning challenge for me, but I have learned to completely trust God’s wisdom. I know that no matter what happens, He will take care of me and my family. I finally feel peace in my heart almost all of the time. And when I don’t, I know the things I can do to find it.
I’m grateful that because my fear, sorrow, and pain were more than I had ever experienced before, I was also able to see the obvious hand of God in my life more than ever before. I have felt strongly since then that I need to always acknowledge that He is there, and that He did, in fact, help me every time I really needed it. I have tried to have a close relationship with my Heavenly Father, and asked Him to give me courage. He has always made me equal to the challenges I faced. I was given strength and courage beyond my own.
Faith in Christ can help us overcome any fear. Christ said, “In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
