I’ve been meditating on this and feel led to share. Sharing a testimony is for others, not for ourselves. People need to know they aren’t going through things alone. The enemy likes to make us think we are alone and when he gets us alone, he can really mess with us.

December 21, 2009, when we found my dad in his front office, deceased, my adrenaline had kicked in so hard that I couldn’t even dial 9-1-1 on my large faced android phone. Literally, took me about five minutes to be able to dial the numbers I was shaking so bad from the adrenaline. I was so frustrated I eventually set the phone down on one of the work tables and used my right hand to steady my left hand enough to dial the numbers. Not sure how that worked since both hands were uncontrollably trembling.

Something happened to me that night because of the adrenaline rush. Something changed internally. I don’t really know how to explain it but I thought something was really wrong with me because I wasn’t, and couldn’t, cry. I couldn’t really feel anything, I had gone numb physically, emotionally and mentally. I didn’t cry the entire time we waited on police and ambulance to show up. I didn’t even cry as I watched them wheel him out on a gurney in a zipped up body bag. I just kept thinking over and over again, “What is wrong with me?”

A fear settled into me that I had never had before, little by little. I started noticing it when things would take place months after his passing. The following February I had a meltdown in my car driving home when snow hit and I was stuck on a hill with my wheels spinning. It came out of nowhere.

When the tornadoes came through on April 2011 and I drove through the tail end of one downtown, thinking my car was going to go rolling like a tumbleweed, the fear living inside of me gained strength.

I didn’t understand why this fear had taken hold of me and there aren’t words to describe what it was really like. Children of God aren’t supposed to live in fear and I prayed about this daily and begged God to take it from me over the last 8 years. I wasn’t a person who lived in fear prior to this. My husband knows however that this fear had changed me. If it was raining out, I wasn’t driving anywhere and if I did, it was nerve wracking and I was white knuckling the steering wheel the entire time. Didn’t even have to be storming, just raining.

It was never about the rain or the snow though. It was a fear that settled in the night my dad passed. I hated it. I didn’t want it. I was ashamed of it.

Earlier this summer, when we were headed to one of our first appointments for a baby check up, it was pouring rain sideways and some thunder and lightning…My husband asked me if I wanted him to drive. My response was, “No, why?”

Note that I typically drive when we go somewhere because I get severe car sickness, something else I’ve prayed about and still believing I will no longer have.

I realized however in that moment, the fear was gone. Completely gone. It no longer had a hold of me. I knew it wasn’t coming back either. For over seven years I had been living with an internal fear, had never talked to anyone besides God about it and continuously spoke scriptures over myself in defiance to the fear, and it had hindered me in many ways. In that moment, I was set free. Prayer, perseverance and the Word of God had conquered it.

One would think it would get worse carrying a child inside them and worrying about their safety but just like something clicked inside of me when that fear took hold, something clicked inside of me when I let it go. I knew right then, I would never have that again. It was gone.

I was thinking about this last night as I was driving to church when I left work. It was pouring, people driving crazy, water on the roads, glare on my windshield…and I started laughing.

Joshua 1:9

Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.