Be Not Afraid

February is Black History Month and on February 1^st, Google had a caricature of Harriet Tubman with her lantern on their search page.  It was not a great caricature but it got me to thinking about her many midnight journeys and how much fear she had to overcome.  Harriet Tubman not only had to overcome her own fear to free herself from slavery; she had to overcome the fears of all the other slaves she went back to get.  She returned to the South 19 times and freed over 300 slaves.  She reportedly carried a gun and told those that got tired or afraid, “You’ll be free or die.” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1535.html)

What if we told ourselves something similar to that?  What if we told ourselves, “You’ll be successful or die trying” or “You’ll be happy or die trying”?  What if we were not afraid to chase our dreams of freedom from monotony and mediocrity?  What if we were not afraid to go back and pull others out of the ghettos from which we came?  What would you do if you were not afraid of failure, disappointment, or simply looking stupid?  What would your life look like if you were not afraid to step out on faith and stretch yourself to live your purpose?  What would your life look like if you were not afraid to simply do something different to get a different result?  What would you do if you were not afraid?

If I were not afraid, I would probably speak my mind more; but like most people, I am afraid that I will be disliked or may lose friends because of what I might say.  If I were not afraid, I probably would have written more than one book by now; but it has taken so long to get over the fear of publishing this first one that I have been paralyzed.  If I were not afraid, I would be practicing full-time instead of part-time and trusting that all my bills would be paid.  Those are just to name a few of the big ones.

Because I am not afraid of being hurt, I have opened my heart to love again; I understand that hurt is a risk that will not kill me.  Because I am not afraid of my feelings, I regularly go to therapy to face them and process their meaning in my life.  Because I am not afraid of being judged as a bad parent, I have come to terms with the poor decisions my daughter has made in her life, despite all the lessons I tried to teach her, and am allowing her to work through the mess she created on her own.  Because I am not afraid to be myself 99% of the time, I can look in the mirror every day, without shame, and genuinely love who I see looking back at me.

Could I have done what Harriet Tubman did?  I can’t say because I didn’t live in those times.  I would love to think that I would have had that much fortitude and strength.  Like Tubman, though, I do refuse to let another human being break my spirit and I do refuse to let fear hold me back from what I know I deserve to have in my life. 

In the Bible, God says, “Be not afraid,” 366 times – an average of once every day of the year.  That is a commandment that I believe I need to follow daily.  My challenge to you is that you do the same: Stop being afraid, start doing things you have dreamed about, and see how your life changes.