As long as I can remember I have been afraid of most everything. Spiders-but who isn’t? Flying-you’re in a tube speeding through the air miles above the earth. Heights-you’re crazy, if you’re not. Closed-in spaces-does anyone really like MRIs? Being underground-tunnels can cave in. Water-obviously, you can drown.
The earliest I can ever remember being afraid, no, terrified, was in about the fourth grade when I was in gym class and for some reason only a gym teacher would understand, I was sitting on a trapeze-like thing above the ground and needed to jump down.
I’m sure my feet were only about six inches from the ground since that was what my teacher kept telling me as the class looked on, but I had a death grip on the rope handles and wasn’t about to take a leap of faith. She must have eventually lifted me down because I have gone on to have a relatively normal life off of a trapeze, but I still remember terror.
Since that time throughout my life, I have pretty much reacted to every situation with fear and a gut feeling that whatever the worst thing that can happen to anyone will happen to me, much to the frustration of my family at times.
Fear about all things connected to life took a bad turn on Jan. 1st two years ago when I woke up and realized that I would turn 55 that year, and in just 15 years I would be 70. (My sincere apologies to all 70-plus-year-olds. I’m just relating feelings!) There followed a deep down spiritual panic about growing older and dying. Suddenly, I faced my mortality.
For the next months, I questioned my testimony, my faith or lack thereof and just about everything that had always seemed stable to me. How could I say I had faith and a testimony if it only lasted until I got to the gates of death in my mind and then I knew only fear and uncertainty?
I talked honestly to at least two people who were facing death, and they seemed to feel confidence that all would be well. One of them was a woman who had been inactive in the Church for years and had only recently returned to erratic activity. She faced death with faith, so what was wrong with me, who had never had a moment’s inactivity since I was baptized on my 18th birthday?
An older sister who was 84 responded to my question as to whether she feared death with, “I’m keeping the commandments. What is there to be afraid of?” But I was keeping the commandments, and I was afraid.
Another older sister was disappointed after a scare with her heart that she hadn’t died. “How can you say that?” I asked her. “Because I think the next life is going to be better,” she answered. “Think?” I thought. Thinking wasn’t doing it for me. I wanted proof.
I wanted an angel or even a little burning bush to let me know death would be all right.
Alas, it was not to be. Months of searching and praying, however, have given me valuable insights about the whole human condition of fear.
The Lord is Aware of our Tendency to Fear and Seeks to Calm It.
Maybe times throughout the scriptures when the Lord and other heavenly visitors manifest themselves to mortals, their first utterances acknowledge fear and offer assurance that all is well.
When angels announced the birth of the Savior, the first words we have recorded from them are “Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy.” (Luke 2:10)
Years later, when an angel met the two Marys at the tomb of Jesus, the first words out of the angel’s mouth were “Fear not.”
Zacharias also heard these words when an angel appeared to him and told him that his wife, Elizabeth, would bare a son, John: “But the angel said unto him, Fear not,
Zacharias.” (Luke 1:13)
In latter-day revelation, there are at least 12 instances in the Doctrine & Covenants where the Lord tells his children not to fear. One of the most direct is in the wonderfully comforting 121st section where He tells Joseph Smith in no uncertain terms to “fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever.
.. .”
In Company with the Rest of Humanity
Throughout all of Western literature since its beginning, the brevity of life and the surety of death has been a major, if not the major, theme of the poets and writers who interpret life for the masses of humanity. From Tennyson to Dickinson, and both ways in either direction of a timeline, writers have found ample fodder in questioning life’s meaning and the mystery of death.
I found comfort that even prophets, those whose understanding surely must reach beyond the veil, must come to terms with their own mortality as the rest of us do. In October 2008 General Conference, President Monson, it seemed, spoke directly to me when he chose as his subject the fleeting nature of life, its inevitable end and the importance of finding joy in the journey. One sentence seemed to sum up his message: “Let us relish life as we live it, find joy in the journey, and share our love with friends and family. One day each of us will run out of tomorrows.”
And what comfort I found in the words of President Hinckley in the hymn he penned entitled “What is This Thing That Men Call Death?” If a prophet of God can ask of Him, “O God, touch Thou my aching heart / And calm my troubled, haunting fears,” then surely the Lord would not judge my fear but use it as a means of growth.
Seeing the Hand of God in the Road behind you Helps Calm Fear.
I had been a member of the Church for many years, struggling often with fear when I considered the future, when a stake Relief Society president taught a lesson in which she said that the best way to see the hand of the Lord in your life is to look to the path behind you. I had always thought that was sort of cheating. Shouldn’t you have faith and trust just because of your testimony, independent of anything that had happened before in your life? Wasn’t looking back asking for proof?
But a quick search of the word “remember” in the scriptures-88 results in the Book of Mormon alone- shows that the Lord considers the act of remembering His goodness and care in your past not cheating, but a valid means to achieve faith for present and future actions.
Remembering how God has worked in my life before to help me with things I feared in the past inspires me to trust Him with my future.
In Psalm 76, David, who is so often brutally honest about his troubled feelings, begins the psalm in the “day of my trouble” with his soul refusing to be comforted. Yet, by verse 11, he finds comfort when he says “I will remember the work of the Lord: surely I will remember thy wonders of old.”
The realization that God has held us in His hand in the past can surely help us trust Him to do the same in the future.
Being Prepared can Decrease Fear
Facing your mortality, even with fear and trembling, can be good if it motivates you to examine your life and make necessary changes. The Lord’s counsel in D&C 38:30-“. . . if ye are prepared, ye shall not fear” is a one-size-fits-all counsel that can apply to such pursuits as passing a test to building a food storage supply to going on a mission to facing the sunset years of one’s life.
In a discussion about growing older with a good friend who had turned 75 (and was still doing cartwheels on my lawn until he was 68), I asked him if he feared death. He said, “Maybe if I knew I was going to die that day, I might be afraid.” He was too busy living the gospel, serving his brothers and sisters, and preparing for his eternal reward to fret too much. By the way, he is now 76 and has been the early-morning seminary teacher for two years.
Always and Forever, the Savior is the Answer
I find great comfort in remembering that even the Savior Himself in His darkest hour in the Garden of Gethsemane faced fear about His future.
.. . How grateful I am that the writers of the gospels included in their accounts this time when even the Son of God was afraid and yet still remained firm in following His Father’s will.
When He tells me in the scriptures to “doubt not” and “fear not,” I can be assured that He knows my fear intimately because He also experienced it, overcame it and will help me do the same.
Ultimately, the answer to mortal fear is to follow the counsel of the Savior in D&C 6:36: “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.”
I don’t think I’ll be making friends with any spiders or bungee-jumping off of any bridges any time soon, but with the help of the Savior, perhaps I can face the future less afraid.
