My blonde hair was becoming damp beneath the weight of the covers piled high above me. There had to be a least a foot of fluffiness on top of me while I was sleeping, just in case a bad guy came into my room with a knife to stab me; he wouldn’t actually get me then, just a slice of fabric. Sweat continued to dampen my hair. It didn’t help that I refused to sleep in my Little Mermaid PJs. There was no way I could safely jump through a broken window wearing those thin things and no shoes! I couldn’t explain that to my momma though; she wouldn’t understand me.  If there was a fire in my house, the only way to get out would be to break my window, so I had to wear all of my clothes, including my socks and shoes…just in case. I blinked my eyes. There was no way I was going to be ready for that spelling test tomorrow in Mrs. Kern’s class. I was too afraid to fall asleep. I slipped my arm out of the mound of covers and reached under my bed. There it was, nice and smooth, my dad’s baseball bat. That could come in handy for a variety of horrible events…just in case.

I’m so sleepy. My eyes began to droop, and my mind wonder. What happens when we die? I’m scared to find out. It will be so scary. Will I be forever drifting in darkness? Wait, do I hear something? Footsteps in the hallway? Mom?

With my heart thudding and my mind racing, I finally fell asleep. This was a normal routine for me at the age of 8 years old.

This past Sunday, Pastor Matt talked about fear. That sermon struck a chord with me because it was such a huge part of my past. There is not much I remember about my life before I became a Christian because I was a small child, but the one thing that I do remember is the fear. It was so irrational, but my imagination allowed for the most improbable things to happen to me. It didn’t help that I had nightmare and night terrors of three-headed dragons breaking through the floor in my room, ready to eat me, and of evil men trying to chop my limbs off with a chainsaws. That fear incapacitated me as a child. The thing that it all boiled down to was the fear of death and dying. I didn’t know what would happen. Then, Christ reached His hand down into my young life and gave me the greatest gift I could have ever wanted, peace. Once I accepted Christ, and trusted in His grace and love, I stopped fearing death. With a child-like faith, I was able to trust in His goodness and anticipate heaven. I didn’t fully understand everything because I was just a child, but that was the beauty of it.

Since then, God has continued to arm me with scriptures to battle fear. “For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 2 Tim 1:7.

Throughout my life I have had to continually battle fears, mostly irrational fears. Those fears, I know are simply a tool from the enemy to make me useless. Once, when Micah was a year and a half old, I had a horrible vision of him dying in a car accident on a field trip with his daycare. At that moment God spoke truth to me. He said, “Brittany, you just had the best time with your son where you were overflowing with gratitude to me, and now here you are on the verge of tears thinking about something that has definitely not happened. Do not let Satan rob you of your joy. Let me give you joy, child.”

Let’s breathe in that joy as a church this week and refuse to let the enemy rob Lakeside.