Fearless

Taylor Swift once said "Being FEARLESS isn't being 100% Not FEARFUL, it's being terrified but you jump anyway..." That quote has always stood out in my mind. 

A few years back I literally jumped despite of the fear I felt. As a child at the city pool, I would get in line to jump off of the high-dive, and then find myself getting out of line. Fear would consume me. Over ten years later I jumped. I wanted to prove to my inner child that there was nothing to be afraid of. I climbed the ladder, looked down below the end of the diving board, held my breath and jumped. The cold water was invigorating as I shot to the bottom of the pool. I did it! I then wondered what caused the fear that kept me from jumping all of those years. The unknown.

The unknown can be terrifying. If we look at the root of most fears, the unknown is at the center. We don't take that new job because what if we don't like it. We fear results from the dr, because we don't know what they will say and the possibility of what they could say scares us. If we get to the root of our fears, that fear starts to fade away.

We all have fear. Currently, I fear telling someone I like them. I fear the vulnerability of putting myself out there and the fear of not knowing how the other person feels. How hard is it to say "Hey, we have a lot in common. I feel like we have a connection and I really care about you. I like you."? It's harder than you think. I could list 100 fears on that subject alone. I bravely(or stupidly) decided to conquer my fears and decided telling this person is a must. For five years I have let the fear of the unknown keep me silent and torture me by never knowing where it could go. So I am telling him. I've given myself a deadline and my friends are holding me to it. Every day I talk myself out of it because of fear, but strangely enough fear is what also makes me want to tell him. The fear of never knowing and missing my chance, is what motivates me. I kind of want to go all Taylor Swift, making this whole post lowercase with random uppercase letters that spell out his name. Nah....

Fear can be crippling, but it can also be motivating. You can sit in the safety of the shore your whole life, watching everyone else enjoy the ocean, or you can get up and walk into the cool waters of the unknown. Fear isn't so scary when you know the reasons why, and the unknown isn't so scary when you know that God is in the unknown. We just have to trust Him.

I will leave you with another quote from Taylor Swift "Real life is a funny thing, you know. I think most of us fear reaching the end of our life and looking back regretting the moments we didn't speak up. When we didn't say 'I love you'. When we should have said 'I'm sorry'. So there's a time for silence, and there's a time for waiting your turn. But if you know how you feel, and you so clearly know what you need to say, you'll know it. I don't think you should wait. I think you should speak now."

So, what fear are you going to conquer by deciding to speak now?