Hopeful Hearts Ministry

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  President FDR

When I was a little girl and lived in El Paso, TX my dad tried to teach me how to ride a bicycle.  We lived in the mountainous region (or to me they were ‘mountains’) and the only way that seemed plausible for my father to teach me to ride was from our driveway to the end of our street.  Downhill.

I would get on the bike and wobble, swerve, shake and cry out when he let go because the speed terrified me. Before I knew it the fear of crashing got the best of me so I took control and made myself turn into the nearest lava rock yard and bump into the nieghbor’s house to stop my momentum.  I’d jump off the bike before I could fall and scrape my knees.

That was the end of my riding lesson in El Paso.  I didn’t learn to ride a bike till I was 9 years old and we lived in Sherman, Tx, on a flat street and in a Cul de Sac.  Uncle Frank couldn’t believe I was 9 and didn’t know how to ride a bike so he took a Saturday and showed me the ropes.  I got it and never fell off.

Thirty years later and I am still afraid of getting scraped, bumped, bruised and God forbid, broken bones.  I gave birth naturally to my two children without an epidural and I’m still a baby when it comes to riding a bike or doing anything ‘adventurous’ that might constitute pain.

Crazy.  I suppose I felt I couldn’t handle the pain.  Makes sense.  I’ve allowed the fear of not being able to handle pain keep me from many blessings in life, particularly the most recent in remembering past abuse.  My subconscious was so afraid of how to handle the knowledge that I had gone through such an atrocious ordeal that the fear kept it hidden.

Guess what?  I can handle it! 🙂  It’s not a walk in the park, or a bike with training wheels, but I feel the pain and I’m still alive, I’m still here, still breathing, still functioning and better still, improving ME.

Makes me wonder what else fear has kept me from accomplishing in life?

What has fear kept you from participating in, or achieving, or acknowledging?

This morning I had another momentous occasion… I went for a short 3 mile run with my running partner, Stephanie, and just as we hit the 1.5 mile marker my foot caught on the lip of the sidewalk and I BUSTED right there in front of the YMCA parking lot at 5:30am when the parking was full!  ** Warning it’s not pretty.**