Parched & Pensive: Fear

Reposted from November 8, 2019 @restorationfamily.wordpress

The body has a build in fight or flight response when faced with situations. Its been observed in animals and humans. Sometimes the responses aren’t typical like to stay and fight may be to lie or that lie may result from the brain fleeing reality. How do we stay grounded when faced with fear? How do we stay strong when faced with fear? How do we stay in control when faced with fear?

There is another reaction when we didn’t have time to experience fear; before the fear was even present. When a mortar explodes into your life and you never saw it coming there is a freeze response that seems to paralyze us until we can access the situation and take inventory of the damage. At which point there is no room for fear but adrenaline kicks in and actions follow.

I have always been amazed at how my mind and body respond to the many situations I have found myself in being my husband’s wife. The Pilot and I have four kids together and if I wasn’t his wife then I wouldn’t have had these kids with these problems and these tendencies. It’s a deep rabbit hole. At age 36, having been a mother for 14 years its motherhood math that I am like a 56 year old in experience years (like dog years: multiply the number of kids by the years you’ve been a mother- 4×14 for me) Overnight I went from 24 motherhood years old to 32 when our fourth was born and her natural, no drug birth certainly aged my soul those 8 years. There isn’t much I fear or fret over with those kids anymore bc I have experienced most all the things. So I focus my “fears” on the oldest two since I have been through age 8 and 5 all the times before. It is my third time doing third grade in the last decade (and bonus its all been at the same school for the first time, unlike all the other grades!)

Fight or Flight is also called acute stress syndrome-its psychological. Its perceived threat. Here is where mind, body and soul intersect. The mind makes up something to fear, the body reacts-involving the nervous system, the endocrine (hormonal) system, and blood flow and muscle tension to maximize blood clots, strength and energy-then the soul follows. What happens to our body when it maintains this surge for too long is it will blow a breaker; it will overload all the systems. It will cause them to work and run and function on burnout mode bc as humans and not machines we just keep going and don’t shut down to avoid overheating. We don’t power off.

Sometimes something in one of these systems will trip the breaker-the heart may not sustain and give out instead-the blood pressure pump may blow. There are failsafes built into our anatomy but we have learned to medicate with caffeine, food, Netflix…alcohol and just trick those warning lights into thinking they are reset. What happens to our soul when it sits in this status? What happens to our body when it is constant repair mode? What happens to our mind when we can shake the perceived threat?

You can look at a person and decide how they should respond based on your perception of their life. You can even look at your own life and think the ways you would want or expect to respond, but the truth is that {God only knows} what is in your heart. He literally created you. He created the mountains and the majesties and then you. He knows everything about you from before you were born until the end of your story. He knows the twists and turns your life will take and the trials and triumphs. He didn’t create the fight or flight response this way-we humans, mere mortals have adulterated it.

The idea was to love God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, and your strength. The idea was to run to him-into his arms to flee or to stand firm in his victory. To fight in his glory and in his name. To take flight, to rest and regroup in the comfort of the savior. To breathe, Sabbath. So where does the freeze response come in?

Freeze is us spiritually being lukewarm growing cold and the longer we sit the quicker we turn a cold heart to God and others. The Freeze is allowing Fear to confuse you. Fear will mesmerize you and convince you that you aren’t what the Truths say-it will push you to fight, not the spiritual enemy but each other, or to flee and runaway from the promises. It will make you believe that you aren’t {good} enough-for whatever it is that you are growing fearful of.

We have to remain on fire! We have to keep adding wood to stoke it and keep it going-words from the Father, timeless promises, and solid truths. The fire will die and grow cold over too much time and it takes a lot longer to get back warm and blowing.

Fight or Flight is the difference of the letter “L” and that makes me think of Love. What is loving in the fight you are training for and wearing your body out for? is it a fight for fitness or body image? is it a fight for power and authority in a job or relationship? is it a fight for more money? What are you fleeing? What is loving in running away from that job, people, situation? Are you showing and shining Gods love onto others, Jesus with skin on? Freeze-makes it EZ for the enemy. If we are frozen in fear then we can’t fulfill Gods call on our life and we can’t bring others to him.

Thats a lot of “F”s to think about today. Fear, Fight, Flight, Freeze…What if instead of Fear we had Free{dom}; instead of Fight we had Friends; instead of Flight we had Firm; instead of Freeze we had Forward. I encourage and challenge and raise you to Free your mind, Stand Firm in body, open up your heart in a Friendly way and move Forward in the soul strengthening grace of God in any and all your situations that would have otherwise engaged that acute stress response so that we may have a new adaptive strategy in play.

Change your reaction pathway. Make a chain reaction upwards…