Fear

“Fear is an ugly liar”

A very dear friend of mine said that to me once after I shared my fears with her... In this journey I have found fear to hang around like a bad smell. It can rob life of life, even more than sickness. Now, whenever I have fearful thoughts I am empowered by this phrase and say it to myself with a smile.

Before the cancer diagnosis, I experienced extreme attacks of fear and it started when I was about four months pregnant. My imagination would just go wild on me. I would wake up in the night with dreams of drowning, and then while I was awake I would lie in bed and think about people breaking into our home. Everyday I would walk down our road and I could picture all the trees falling on me. Whenever I drove I would imagine being in a car accident, and these were not passing thoughts - they were terrifying and constant fears. I felt like I was living in another world - there was not a day that I didn’t think something bad was going to happen. When I was six months pregnant we were in Japan and I thought we were going to drown in a tsunami, or while in buildings I would look for exits in case there was an earthquake, and you could imagine how the flights would have made me feel...

My ma and nana are terrible worriers. It’s a trait we are all trying to break. They would worry about everything and anything, and being in the Christchurch earthquakes just made their worrying worse. The anxiety attached to nana’s greatest fear (losing family) has almost crippled her. So for a while, regrettably, I blamed ma and nana for my increasingly irrational thoughts. But it had nothing to do with them and I was grasping at straws trying to understand what was going on.

In reflection I wonder if all the crazy thoughts when I was pregnant was to do with the cancer as when I found out about it, I never had these types of thoughts again (of earthquakes or break-ins or tsunami’s).

Instead, a new type of fear presented. This fear said, “Sarona you are going to die. I am going to take you and you will never see your baby grow up. Your husband will be without you and he will re-marry. Your parents will mourn you and then you will be forgotten”.

Fear is an ugly liar.

The first four months post-diagnosis were the worst. My days were covered in thick dark fog. I would be talking to people but not really be present. The nights were long as there was no-one to distract me from my thoughts. I know my husband also had many sleepless nights, we just didn’t speak, each hoping the other was getting rest.

It didn’t matter where I was or what I did, I always thought of dying. I would be in the shower and be daydreaming of who would be at my funeral. We would walk past an urupa and I would think about where I would be buried. Shopping used to be my favourite pastime but I didn’t want to buy clothes as I thought “what was the point?”. It’s not in my nature to be pessimistic about things and I did believe that I would be healed - I just couldn’t control the thoughts that would pop up. I would be 5 minutes into a daydream before I was conscious of what I was thinking.

We had a plan to fight the cancer (see treatments), and only once did the tumour grow. Fear had a field-day here, but we persevered, changing our strategy slightly but still walking in faith. And that is one thing I want to point out - having faith doesn’t mean you are immune from fear, it just helps you see it for what it really is. Because fear is an ugly liar.

When the tumour seemed stable and our plan seemed to be working, I was plagued with self-doubt. You see, fear speaks many languages and it was telling me I was a burden, I was ugly, and I would never be of value to my marriage or my family. Vernon is the most patient and beautiful person I know, and never let me sit long with these thoughts, but they passed through my mind none-the-less. In hindsight, I see that working through these trials has made me more humble and grateful for the people around me.

The fear became quieter as time went on. There wasn’t a time or date where it stopped, but as I learned to press into God more it didn't have time or space to wreak havoc. I surrounded myself with positive people and played a lot of christian music so even when I wasn't aware of it, I was surrounding myself with faith. I kept a journal (read ‘Kisses from Heaven’) of all the blessings God sent at specific times when I needed them. If I wasn't writing in this journal I was reading it over and over again to boost my faith. This journal reminded me that God was real, and to let fear in was to doubt truth.

Even now that I am well, fear will still try and rear its ugly head. Trying to plant seeds of doubt that I’m not really healed; or lies that sickness can be passed onto my children. Thankfully, I feel like a bit of an expert now so here is my process...
1) Firstly I acknowledge the thought. Sometimes shame can make us clam up and all that does is allow the thought to grow in the shadows. I find someone I trust. I say, “I know this is silly, but this is what I have been thinking”. Call it out.
2) I seek God. He knows my thoughts and where they come from. As soon as I think something ugly I say, “God! Did you see that? Please take that thought from me, please cleanse my thoughts with the blood of Jesus!”.
3) Speak truth - rebuke the throughts with what God has spoken. I may hear in my head, “Things are going to get worse”. But I speak against those thoughts with God’s word over my life. *“I will be fully healed; Shouts of victory resound in the tents of the righteous; Bumps in the road are just bumps in the road”. With this I remind myself of how faithful God is. He keeps his word, all the time.

And it’s fear which is an ugly liar.



* Part of prophetic words given to me over the years.