I Have Fear

I really hope that no one reads this and that this can be just my journal with a pretty background and all typed out nice and neat than what my journals actually look like: scribbled thoughts and prayers, sometimes poems. From the times I'm without a journal and just need to write there are the pages of loose leaf paper folded into fourths and sticking out randomly. I hardly ever read them again, maybe once every two years. Every time I finish a journal I always read the first entry and the last to see any growth but I typically don't scour through them.

It's as if I'm afraid that if I read the struggles I have been through, a part of them will be reborn. If you think about it, the small majority of us who have journaled for a significant part of our lives can see how our souls grow, how each lesson changes us. I started writing after my Mom was hospitalized for the first time around the age of 12. Each individual event in my life has changed me. They made me believe, they made me doubt, they made angry, they made me awestruck.

As I get closer to my birthday (24) I can't help but think that I have been keeping a record of my life for about half of my life and that the one trait that is always constant is fear. I wish I could change, especially as it has become more prevalent in the last two years in my life is fear.

I have always been afraid of committing to something and often times someone, if I don't see the escape. I was afraid of committing to college, relationships, volunteer work, work. The past two years have been full of fear of disappointing someone or hurting someone. It's hard for me to let go of control, it's something I pray for all the time. "Lord let me surrender."

Now I have no control. My Dad... It's funny how tragedy makes people react in certain ways. I know people in the face of tragedy and hardship who swear off God all together. I can get angry at how they can give up while I watch my Dad pray everyday, morning prayer, evening prayer, and night prayer, and in the middle of his own suffering he is joyful and tells me, "Han, I pray for grace of perseverance." Dad, make it a double, one for you one for me.