[Note: I just discovered this in a "drafts" folder. Apparently, I wrote it while in grad school the first time, somewhere between 2005-2006. Oh, How I can still relate to this completely. Sad commentary on my lack of growth between then and now.]
Every five months when a new school term begins, I am overwhelmed with the intensity with which I try to avoid diving in to the work.
It doesn't help, I suppose, when it appears to be Spring, even though I know for certain it's winter. Dead winter. Though the sunshine does ease the burden somewhat.
Ever since I was a child, I've been terrified of the unknown - whether it was a week at church camp in a woods near a pond or a sleepover with friends - I think it has something to do with the fact that these are not situations that I can control. That I think I can control.
As I got older, the circumstances that brought on these bouts of paralyzing fear had to do with change: going to college, traveling around the world with a group of strangers and then with only my best friend, moving to Arizona for the summers, and coming to grad school. My comfort zone is very small and none of these things fit into it.
I'm approaching another stage right now that is scary and the tightness in my chest and the anvil in the bottom of my stomach are closing me off, weighing me down, and separating me from everyone else, it seems.
The question that flashes across my mind is this: what if I fail? What if I can't pull it off and I'm unable to finish, to succeed? What if, in stepping across this threshold, I lose another part of who I am - the quiet parts, the sacred parts, the ones that make me feel at home and safe and free.
It's ridiculous, this fear. Irrational. And that's what allows me to see it. I can yell at it to go away - "I see you, Fear!" But it sees me too, and wins the staring contest every time.
Voicing my issues always helps...and even though this will never be posted, I feel better knowing it's out there. Perhaps later, at the end of term, when I've completed the necessary work and when I've succeeded, I can come back to this confession and laugh. "Gotcha again." Fear says, as it stirs another pot of hysteria, threatening to break the surface.
This is why they say that focusing on God changes perspective. If He directs my path - I will succeed, eventually, on His terms, in His way, not my own. For that I'm grateful. Now, to extract the anvil from my gut...
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