When fear stops you

Hi


Last weekend I visited an aquarium with my family, and while we were watching the fishes of the Caribbean, I found something very peculiar: an eel garden. When I looked at the eels, I could barely see their heads as they reached out of the hole they live in, and when hearing to the explanation of the caretaker I was more surprised as he explained that, with a length of thirteen inches, that fish never learned to swim, for fear, and they were submerged taking out only their head to see if they can get any food. They don't even go out looking for food, they wait for the sea current to bring food. I found it very interesting. Its name is Gorgasia Preclara, from a family of teleosteos fish distributed by the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.


Immediately after I listened to the explanation, I reflected on how sometimes humans behave like Gorgasia Preclara. We dare not to undertake our projects and follow the road to a dream because of different fears that take over our mind. Fears to failure, fears to what others might think, fears to make mistakes, fears to rejection; In the end, so many fears that if I list them all, it is probable that it (the list) will not end. The days, the weeks, the months and the years go by, and we are still standing in the same point of departure without taking a single step towards that goal or that dream. When this happens, we are filled with frustrations because we feel an incomplete life and we constantly question what would have happened if we had dared to take another direction in our lives.


For a long time I experienced the situation in which I felt the need for a change in my life, the need to find a mission, a purpose. I felt the need not to be content with lamenting for an illness and to prove to myself that despite my illness God could do great things in my life, I felt the need as I have mentioned in others blogs, not to spend the days walking or on a train with the sole purpose of waiting for my son to get out of school or to ask myself if someday the illness would disappear. I felt hope that there was something we could do to solve our economic problem but at the same time I felt fear to take the risks. On one occasion, my brother, who is a doctor, offered me a large sum of money to work for him as part of the Accounting department of the office he was planning to open. Any other person would not have thought it twice but I did not accepted because I had to leave my country and I was afraid to have a fresh start in my life, paralysed by the fear instead of let God's hand guide me to a new beginning with the confidence that He would guide me and take care of me. Just like that fish, which spend the years without leaving the hole because of fear. I was at the same starting point, until I decided to put my total and absolute trust in God and decided one day in my prayer to give God my problems and ask him to help me get out of them. When the option to have surgery came, I launched myself, with fear, but I did it. When I was given again the opportunity to leave my country, an opportunity given to my husband of which I wrote on another blog, I launched myself without fear to a new start, a new beginning . God gave me the challenge to write and I accepted it by finding a mission in my life to bring a message of hope to others who think they have no hope in life. Now when looking back, I can realize that I am swimming and that I have traveled a great way in a short time because I simply decided to leave the hole and start swimming in search of a course and I no longer stand still waiting to see what life would bring me.


Jeremiah 1:19: "And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith the LORD, to deliver thee.


Psalms 23:(1-4): " The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.


God knows how destructive fear can be to us, is for that reason that the Bible warns us about it and gives us the hope that with the help of God  nothing will happen to us. If you have a dream or you are living a situation that you want to change, give it to God and dare to fight. Do not behave like Georgasia Preclara that looms to see what the current bring and it goes back to hide without daring to swim. Dare to swim in the sea of life, swim without fear, enjoy every wave and every stream. Make each wave push you a little more towards that dream or goal that is in your heart.


Psalms 46:(1-3) says God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.