My three-year-old cousin raced around our downstairs yesterday. All joy and determination, he desperately wanted to go as fast as he possibly could around and around the center fireplace in our home.

He sped past stone corners un-childproofed, near wooden beams not padded to protect little heads, and by shelves that wouldn’t budge. The mom in me winced at every circuit. But he laughed and he ran and in all honesty, I don’t think it occurred to him he might fall.

At three you don’t worry about the stone hearth you might crack your head open on, you just worry about going fast and the fun you will have while doing it.  You aren’t scared or stuck or stopped. At three, you don’t count the risks, weigh them and wonder if you will survive. You just run.

At three, you are free.

The opposite of fear isn’t courage. The opposite of fear is freedom.

The past year was a difficult one for me.

I got stopped and stuck and at times I wondered if I really was going to survive. I did not live a year that felt free. Instead it felt heavy and hard and bogged down.

I’m pretty sure I’m ready to run again. I’m ready to speed around the fireplace and not worry about the sharp corners. The sharp corners will always be there and I’m stupid to think I can avoid them and still live a life that is free and full of adventure.

So let’s ALL begin to run again. Let’s jump up and take a step forward and another one. And let’s take another one until the moving forward turns from a creep into a walk into a run. Let’s move with joy and with determination in the hope that this year is full of promise and of freedom.

I’m ready. Are you?

On Monday I took the scariest flight of my life. By leaps and bounds.

But I made it. My daughters, on the other hand, thought it felt like a roller coaster.

“This is JUST LIKE THE TOWER OF TERROR, Mommy!” That was the sentiment from my five-year-old.

Here’s my story. And theirs.

Mine is full of fear and theirs is full of joy.

Have you found joy and fear in the same place?

It can be scary sitting so close to the edge of the world.

We watched the sun sink, not over the western sea like I’m used to, but over the trees, still to the west, while the clouds were painted pink over the Atlantic.

And then when it got too dark to see faces and the ocean began to retreat with the moon, we sat down in pairs and threes. Silhouettes and silver light. Fine sand on my hands and between my toes.

I told Emily. “Its strange to think that the edge of the country is right here. Right at our fingertips.”

And that the whole big wide sea that stretches all the way from the waves in South Carolina to the coast of Africa is just steps away from us. Yet we laugh, ignore it sometimes, forget it’s there and trust that it won’t rise up to swallow us whole.

We even turn our backs to it because we all think we KNOW it so well. The sea. We are not afraid of it.

We can tell the tide is pulling out. We know we can leave our sandals on the deck and that they will be there when we return. That we can lie down on the blanket and maybe close our eyes. Maybe.

It is good, the sea. But it is not truly safe.

Yes. The sea could actually rise up, with enough storm force or a shaking of the earth and remove us from our places on the sand. It could rise, tide high with a strong moon and do strange and unnatural things with the shore.

It is good. But it is not safe.

Like the sea, our God is one who is good but not entirely “safe.” But unlike the sea, our God is bound by His goodness. He is bound by His love for us. And in that goodness and love, we are held.

And with Him, we can lie down on the sand, eyes closed, and trust that His goodness will carry us.

And maybe, with Him,  it won’t be that scary sitting close to the edge of the world.

photo by Lisa Leonard

How has God been good to you today?

My seven-year-old has just passed the threshold from happy ignorance to informed fear.

She is just now old enough to understand, in a limited way, that there is true and concrete evil in the world. And that scares her.

Bad guys. Monsters. Robbers.

Add to that fires and earthquakes, and I have one scared little girl. This is the girl who used not to be scared of anything. The one who jumped into the pool before she could swim. The one who barreled through the gates of preschool and said, “See ya later, Mom!”

The past several months she has been curious about how safe our home is, if we have an escape plan (oops, put that on my list), what do we do in an earthquake, and if angels really do protect her all night long.

So, I pray with her again. Give her an extra kiss or two and leave the light on in the bathroom. I sing to her and tell her a story. I tell her to pray for peace when she gets scared because that’s the only way I know how to stop being afraid myself.

“Because Mamas are afraid too.”

Really?

“And they get scared and feel alone and wonder if they are the only ones. Mamas get scared of robbers and fires sometimes.”

Really?

“But mostly Mamas worry about their little girls. And then the only thing a Mama can do is to pray for her girls and their safety and that the angels take special care.”

And then what I don’t say is that I get extra scared because of the worst kinds of evil, the kinds I can’t tell her about and hope she never discovers. I can’t tell her that there are real, true things to be genuinely scared of and that only answer is prayer. And faith. And trust. And that in itself is scary.

And then I have to live what I tell her.

Sometimes its hard being a Mama and being afraid of the dark more than she is.

“When I grow up, I want to be a scientist, a horse rider and a travel agent.” I ask her if she really knows what a travel agent does. She replies that they travel, of course. I guess I probably shouldn’t burst her bubble that they really mostly sell travel packages to other people who travel. These are a five-year-old’s dreams today. And they will change endless times between here and then.

I was talking to a friend awhile back and she commented that sometimes you just have to be okay not to realize your dreams, that some things will never happen and there are many things you cannot change. This is true for many dreams, the ones that can’t be changed: things from the past or things far beyond your control.

But, then again, there are some things you can.

When I was a small girl, honestly, I can’t remember what I wanted to be when I grew up. I think it was a mix of dolphin trainer, zookeeper, and the girls that rode Shamu at Sea World.

When I was in high school and I began to read good things, I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t realize that a person must live a little life in order to be a significant one and to really write.

At my University, I should have taken the jump off the edge of practicality, safety and sureness and plunged into things that I was good at. What is the thing that sits in my soul and breathes? What fills me and exists within quietness? I should have studied writing, but I was too scared.

I made some sort of internal compromise and taught school. I loved it but it wasn’t my dream.

Is it too late to realize a dream? Is a person too old to begin something? I have been in writing-silence for ten years. Maybe its time to jump off the edge.

I am looking over there on my sidebar and I am watching the poll:

If I could I would…

• climb a mountain
• pilot a plane
• bungee jump
• ride a wild horse
• run a marathon

If you view the results, just under half of the respondents chose the marathon. Of course this is totally confidential and untraceable and I could never hold anyone to account for this….

So, what stops us? Of the five, running a marathon might be the most accessible for the common person…really. Think about it. And perhaps the cheapest (big races like that usually cost somewhere between $35 and $75 to register).

So really, what stops us? I am not about to get on my running-soapbox because I understand not all of us can run, like to run, live in a place where we can run, or are physically unable somehow. I do have to say that I have been, well, “athletically challenged” all my life for various reasons, and honestly, running is about the only thing I can do (I like to swim too but I’m not very good). But, let’s use this as a metaphor for those things that we deem unreachable, unattainable, too difficult, or too painful.

MARATHON…26.2 miles. I’ve only done one. I am not what I would consider a “marathoner” but I think that I can put myself in the train-myself-from-the-ground-up category. It is my firm belief that if a person can run between 3 and 6 miles, that same person can train for and complete a marathon. My time was not horribly embarrassing, but not great either: 4:37. Four hours and thirty-seven minutes of running, jogging, crying, spacing-out, yelling at my husband. Its hard, and there are parts of it that really aren’t fun.

I won’t lie and say that it doesn’t take a lot of TIME to train and DISCIPLINE (pretty much the old “I don’t want to do it but I know I need to”) to increase your running-shape from a 3 miler to a 20 miler.

But watching that poll climb this past week has made me think about all of you, and me, for that matter: What are we NOT trying that we COULD DO but just haven’t taken the plunge, because of fear. It really does just boil down to fear. Really, I am not advocating all of you to go out and train for a marathon (some bad stuff happened in Chicago on Sunday, I hear). But, truthfully, fear keeps us locked down, stuck in one place, never trying, never venturing, always doing the same thing all the time. Fear that I will be in pain if I try to run a marathon, fear that I can’t finish and I will be embarrassed, fear that I will look silly if I tell others I am going to do this, fear that I can’t mentally stand up under that pressure.

If you make the choice NOT to run your “marathon” (or whatever it is), don’t let it be because of fear.

So, this is us. Of course not together, and not in one photo. How would we possibly be able to get a photo of all of us together with the baby smiling? My husband, Chad, the baby, Naomi, me and our older daughter, Hope. The three joys of my life.

And, of course, this is my first attempt at blogging. In my 32-year-old mind, there is some strange fear at the vulnerability of a blog.
No one will want to read…
It’s weird being “out there” on the net…
Stuff like that.

This is us – me and my family. I’m Sarah and I stay at home with my two girls. Hope is 5 1/2 and will be going to Kindergarten in the fall. She loves to ride horses and has taught herself how to read. Naomi is 17 months and loves life. She is beginning to talk and repeats everything. My husband, Chad, is my spontaneous, ADD-fueled partner in life. He is my gift from God who grounds me and is the love of my life.