No fear week

Last Wednesday evening I was driving home from a Bible study when my phone rang. My friend Julie from Minneapolis was calling to catch up a bit, and after discussing a few things together she said, “Ann, what if we decide tonight, that for the next week we will commit to not have fear about anything? We could pick a verse from the Bible to help us fight off fear any time it threatens us, and we will hold each other accountable and pray for each other. Wouldn’t it be great to experience a week without any fear?”

Well, how could this not be a good thing to try? “Sure, I’ll commit to that with you!” We picked a verse and talked about how we would battle any spirit of fear that tried to enter us – no matter how great or small – and then I said with a little laugh, “This isn’t going to be like praying for patience is it?” And, “Whoops – I’m off to a bad start if I’m already afraid of praying against fear.” We laughed a little, then prayed, as we kicked off the week. (We noted that a certain variety of fear protects us and we wouldn’t fight that fear... )

So that was last Wednesday - one week ago. By Thursday night, the cold sores I thought I had on Wednesday had become a diagnosed case of shingles. My battle with fear was about it begin… Now many people get shingles – even many young people, I’ve heard. And what do most people say about this illness? “It’s so painful!” Nevertheless, it was not the impending pain that most threatened my no-fear pact. It was the fact that the outbreak was attacking my face, which meant it could possibly charge right up and into my eye. (I should say, while people’s eyes apparently usually recover from shingles with assistance from modern medicine, one does not want a shingle's lesion on one’s eyeball, and in the worst cases, it can cause blindness.) But wait…I had only two lesions so far and they were both near my lips, not anywhere near my eyes.

But by Friday afternoon I had a lesion as close to my eye as it could possibly be without entering it. It was on the skin just above my lower eyelashes. It seemed like an evil taunt: “Now will you be afraid?” While my loving God seemed to be reassuring me: “Remember your prayer! It wasn’t happenstance. I want you to know that you should not be afraid through this. Even if the worst happens and it goes into your eye, I will be with you and take care of you. I don’t want you to fear.”

Many people were praying for my eye’s protection and for my recovery… Yet, by Saturday morning, my eyeball was tingling and I was crying on the phone to my sister. By Saturday night my upper eyelid was swollen and my eye was in pain. By Sunday night I had a lot of eye pain. But all through, I could still see… The eye doctor and I had been in contact, and he was optimistic since my vision did not seem to be affected and I couldn’t see a lesion on my eyeball when I looked in the mirror.

So here I am at the end of my week without fear. My eye and face still hurt; I’m still on pain medication. But I have a checkup with the doc tomorrow and I think I’ll get a good report.

I confess that I didn’t make it perfectly through the week without fear… But while many things are getting back to normal, I never want to go back to a normal where fear is okay.

In a few minutes I’m going to call Julie and ask about her week...