Thoughts on Fears...

I was told a story today by my good friend Teresa, about her sister Sharon, whose son was killed a week ago. She told me that the other day she had a large spider crawling up her shirt and Sharon just reached over and killed it with her bare hands, totally undisturbed by the event. Sharon said that she has nothing left to fear...her greatest fear has been met, what else is there to fear?
I know that an Ohio spider may seem like a small fear, but there is a lot of truth in that story. I guess you could go one of two places after such a tragedy. You could either dispense of all fear out of hopelessnes and just give up on life...or, you could realize that in the midst of your greatest fears God doesn't change and by His grace, power, and mercy you can survive. Our fears don't have to control us. Even if we experience that which we fear the most, life will go on because God hasn't changed. True life isn't in avoiding difficult, fearful, tragic circumstances...that's a life lived in constant fear of "the other shoe dropping" and trying to maintain control to ensure that nothing bad happens. It just reminds me that living life to avoid things that I fear is futile and the only real purpose, meaning, satisfaction, whatever you call it, in life is living to know and follow Christ, whatever the circumstances of that life might look like.
Anyways, the funeral was survived and...well, what do you say about a funeral? They're never good or happy events. The Lord was very precious in a lot of ways and Tim did a great job sharing the message of hope, and the Lord is working in some hearts as a result of this.
This weekend I got to spend some time with some of my girlfriends from Ohio University and it was great. I'm going to work on figuring out how to get pictures on here (for some GREAT pictures, check out my cousin Amy's blog here). Then, today we had a VBS sign up at an apartment building behind our church and got to meet a few sweet kids and get them signed up! Then, my friend Brandi and her kids, Madi and Dylan, came over and we headed to the beach.
It's been a great couple of days and now I'm getting ready to head off to Denver, Colordado for a conference on Differentiated Instruction. So, I won't be able to post for a few days, but hopefully when I get back I'll figure out how to post pictures and have some great pictures of Denver.