Fly those fears away

I remember walking into my new kindergarten. We moved middle of my kindergarten year and that meant starting school in the middle of the year. Everyone had their friends, their spot on the rug. I was brand new and I was terrified. I remember standing in line for the hot lunch and then helping myself to the salad bar, an apparent no-no because that meant I was buying two meals and I only had money for one. The lunch lady let it slide since I was brand new but definitely gave me “the look.” I remember that look to this day and the embarrassment that followed, the fear of being seen but not actually known or understood. Do you remember a time in your life where that kind of fear felt crippling?

Cade starts Kindergarten today and I’ve see the worry on Cade’s face over the last few months. He’s not jazzed about starting at a new school and sad his preschool friends aren’t going to be with him. I think we spent a lot of time putting off even thinking about this transition! The not thinking about it was a way to cope with big things but now it’s upon us, just like that. And I know it seems like a relatively small thing, but for Cade, it’s a big deal. He’s my slow-to-warm up kiddo, my deep and reserved soul and he really loved his preschool friends. Elmwood Christian Preschool was A-MAZING! I can see him battling the unknown of it all. So I had an idea a few weeks back. A way for him to acknowledge the things he was afraid of yet not dwell on them or let them drive him or in actuality, inhibit him. A simple activity really. We sat down, blank sheet of paper in hand and I wrote down their fears. We then took that sheet of fear-wearing paper, folded it into paper airplanes and took them outside to fly up into the sky.

Sometimes we all just need a moment to acknowledge our fears and then fold them up and toss them far away.

So I sat at that breakfast nook with my babies and asked them what they were most afraid of, nervous or fearful of with school starting. Their responses just about broke my heart in two.  They were afraid of being liked. Afraid no one would play with them or would say unkind things to them. Cade was afraid no one would know him. Let that sit with you friends. How often do we hold those same fears close to our own hearts? Don’t you want to be known? Like deeply known? How often do we listen to these fears? I’m a full fledged grown up (so they say). I’m suppose to have my grown up act together and my very same fears revolve usually around others and a perceived worth I put on myself. So maybe, just maybe, this is actually an activity we ALL need to do. More writing out the things we are afraid of and then folding them up and flying them far away. A way to acknowledge them but not allow them to drive us.

I want those boys of mine to know it is ok to feel things. Feel afraid. Feel small. Feel nervous. Feel unsure. Feel sensitive. Fear the unknown. And more importantly to express their fears and worries.

I also want those boys of mine to not let them rule over their little hearts and inhibit their ability to thrive. Name them my friends. Name those fears and then lets send them away, symbolically telling our hearts its ok to move past them to not be driven by them or restricted from thriving.

So I’ve been mulling over that one fear of Cade’s with that familiar feeling that there was even more here to unpack. Because what Cade said hit a spot on my heart and whispered of faith. Cade, in his simple little way was nudging me towards an even deeper truth that frankly, my mommaheart needed to hear. I am known. We are known. He’s 5 years old so he probably just meant a fear of being in a class of new faces versus the familiar ones he has “known” for the last two years, but ultimately, this is not really the point. Because he’s a human being. And he’ll always have this deep hearts desire to be known, sought…loved and loved not for what he is able to accomplish or produce. Loved not because of his appearance or wit, intellegence or that Olympic gold metal in climbing something very high I’m sure he’s bound to get. What I heard him voice resonated with my own fears of being truly known. And if we’re honest, don’t we all want this? To radiate deep confidence that our lives have worth and meaning and purpose beyond ourselves. That someone loves us and not because of what we do, not imperfectly like our partners in crime here on earth. Loved. Known.

Here is a beautiful thought by J. I. Packer:

“What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it—the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands [Isa. 49:16]. I am never out of his mind. All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him because he first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when his care falters.

This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort—the sort of comfort that energizes, be it said, not enervates—in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.”

—Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 41-42.

I believe there is a God who knows me and therefore I need not fear not being known. A God we can name our fears to like a blank sheet of paper. Who helps us fold up those fears and then release them…fly them away. And not away in the kind of away that makes them less than what they are, but in that beautiful way that acknowledges “yes these fears have been carried and often for miles and miles and over the years and through time.” We’ve packed them up and moved them along our lives like a dusty book we can’t quite seem to let go of. We’ve worn out the shoes of time carrying them along. They’ve attached themselves to us so that it’s either hard to imagine them as not part of the core of who we are or they are so apart of us we don’t even recognize them there. But what if no one knows me? But, what if we are infinitely known.

I believe we have a God that says, “I am bigger than these fears. I am over and through and all around these.” He acknowledges them and fills them, completes them, finalizes them in a way that they no longer hold their power or importance over us or make up who we are inside. We need not pack them around any longer. He is our sky of lovely that we can fly these fears away into knowing that they will no longer need to be along for life’s ride. And when that fear arises. We can look to the sky and let those fears sail away. So write them down. Fold them up. Fly them away. May you know dear friend that you are known.