My Fear & My Shepherd

When I have found myself fearful, living my life, There was no greater comfort to me than this selection of the below Psalm.

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me." (Psalm 23:4)

This psalm was written from a Shepherd's perspective. David wrote it. The psalm is written in a way that it paints to the reader how God protects, loves, cares, and views us. We are His sheep. God will prepare a table for me, anoint my head with oil and I will never thirst because my cup runs over. God does this - and this is the best part - in the presents of my enemies. Talk about showing off. My God ... The Creator ... The Great I Am ... Always is, Was and Will Be, will not only protect me, but will show all others who wish to do me harm how favored I am in his eyes. They should think twice before trying to bring harm to me. I am loved by God, my Shepherd.

Now comes the hook. With all that God gives us, the responsibility of "free will" is the greatest challenge. I have found that with the freedom to choose, I have become my own enemy and God cannot protect me. He cannot protect me from myself, because I chose to ignore His words, His direction, and I fall. Because of His, in my opinion, second greatest gift to us (the greatest gift of all was His Son Jesus) he cannot protect me from the one person who can bring to me the most harm. The one person would be "Me".

I have lived in fear for most of my life. I still do. There are different types of fears with special names and "phobias" attached to it. But my fear is unique only to myself. I believe that we as adults all live with dark fears, fears that we never share. Stripped away, layer by layer until, like a raw nerve, it get so very briefly grazed and it makes us jump in pain, and we quickly put it away again.

My fear lays in wait for me. It seems to try and find the proper timing so that it may reveal itself to me again. I know that it sounds paranoid, as if my fear is stalking me. It is.

Such inner feelings have become a challenge to me. I believe in facing your fears and not allowing them to prevent you from living your life. Or even better, not to allow them to stop me from being who I am. Although I have started a quest to find that out (who I am), I do know that fear most of the time, does not get the better of me. Actually it makes me stronger. But there are times that the fear can be paralyzing. Being afraid to move, hoping that whatever it is that is causing the paralysis passes through and not notice me. That is the true fear that I am speaking about.

Reoccurring nightmares while I sleep and strange feelings that I have been through this before while I am awake, rocks me to my core. Always shaken and left feeling cold, I forever feel like I am fighting to recover what it was that my fear has taken from me. Prayers, tears, insomnia, counseling, drinking, friends, family, doing questionable things (and that I'll leave to your imagination) didn't work. I would pray for relief, for deliverance, for sleep, and at times to die, because I could not live with the fear I have, and I know that I've always had it. I don't have a name for it, but it has been around as long as I can remember. With this fear, I have cause boundless injuries to myself. Both physically as well as spiritually. Physically I will heal. Spiritually, well that is where the fear is based. That is where it lives.

I have voiced to God asking for Him to take all of my problems and fears, and deal with them for me. I can see in my head the box I give to Him, and after searching my soul, believe that there is nothing left to add. Somehow that particular fear falls from the box, or I willingly take it back without realizing it. But it's has always returned.

It is visual darkness. It is not the picture of "Hell" that has been described to me by Pastors or Priests. It is cold and lonely. It is an abyss that is endless, forever showing darker and darker shades of blackness as you look innermost towards the center. I have fallen in that hole. Felt the pull, the speed, the cold. I felt the coldness inside my bones.

God has saved me from falling deeper into this fissure. I have cried out of my sins, asked to be worthy of saving and accepted Jesus openly, that he is my Lord and Savior. God grabbed me, but lets me remember the fall.

As a child I dreamt of where I was saved from. As a teenager I prepared myself so I would not fall. But this fear followed me and tested my will, my strength. This dark presence pushed and tempted me. As an adult, I fell. It won. It was then I saw what "Amazing Grace" was. I was lost and blind, but was found and could see the pain I caused God. He not only saved me, but taught me that if I was not to be my own enemy, he will always cause me to lie down in green pastures, and lead me to the still water. God has restored my soul.

Clowns

I wrote this poem about thirty years ago ...

Where are the clowns of yesteryear?
Who put the happiness away?
Does it lay in the dust with old confetti,
or did it just go away while we aged?

The band stopped playing long ago,
the festive music no longer rings.
The Tents are gone and now weeds have grown in its place.
The laughter is nothing but a memory.

Do clowns die, or just grown up?
Have the painted faces melted with the tears?
Has it faded away like childhood dreams?

Others in my family have read it when the poem was written; I don't know why they didn't lock me up. I have written a lot of poetry while in High School and the Military. But all of it was dark. I thought that I was a pretty happy kid with a great childhood. But who could come up with this stuff if they didn't have issues while growing up? My youngest son once told me (when he was just 13) "Dad, you have more issues than Rolling Stone Magazine". Even he knew...

When I was young, I always saw or felt the pain of things. I don't care if it was human, animal or at times natural. It's hard to explain. It was as if I was witnessing the undoing of my realm and living the pain so that I could record it and tell the story. I can remember there were times that I felt drained for days, other times it came and past quickly. This continued on as I got older.

I very seldom remember the good, just the dread, or the fear of someone else who was in a bad situation. I always tried to relate to it, I'd ask "how would I feel if that would have happened to me?" I knew I felt their real pain. I had to stop myself and not ask that question. It was hard, and I wasn't very effective with controlling it. I remember hurting all of the time.

When it came time for "my pain", that is the crisis and meltdown that occurred with me, I could no longer handle it. Hurting all of the time, I was losing my children in a long custody battle with a drug addicted mother that abandoned the children and came back for them when she ran out of money. She didn't want to work. Taking in the news at large, I was also worried about my job because I started to self medicate. It was August 17, 2001. That was the day that put me over the top. That was the day that when I think of it now, the whole 24 hours are in fragments. Truth be told, the next three and a half years are still in fragments. Some pieces larger than others but there are a lot missing. A lot repressed. The drinking(I felt) help with the damage, but the depression I was in truly the black hole...just destroying everything that it pull in, family, friends, relationships.

The question I have is ... could I have somehow seen this coming over thirty years or so ago? I felt for everybody else, why couldn't feel for me.