It had been a long week and a half. My heart goes out to the Bourland family in the lost of their son as the result of the Highland youth group accident on the way back from Winterfest. As I write this, I am grateful that all the kids who were hospitalized are now at home and recovering. My prayers are with the one adult who is still in the hospital.

My prayers are also with the family of another 6th grader from Slaton who died suddenly the day before school resumed after the holidays. I was part of that counseling team who went to work with the students on three different campuses.

It all takes me back to other similar events -- the Greenlawn bus accident in May of 1999 where 6 girls were killed while on the way back from a church retreat in New Mexico. Both our kids and their spouses, as well as the our daughter's inlaws all attended church there at the time. Our tie to that body of people is still quite strong.

And then, there are the deaths we have experienced here in Post with our students. One year, we lost 2 seniors, a freshman and a college student -- one from a heart condition, one from an asthma attack, and 2 from self-inflicted wounds.

But out of the ashes of these tragedies, God has used his people to bless and to heal. And often, the people who have been the greatest "blessers" are those who were most affected by the loss. I hope to write more on this later, but for now, I bid you God's speed.

Faced with Fear.......

My dad, like many of us, kept things in his Bible that were timely to him. He had sermon notes on 3x5 cards on forgiveness and a pamphlet simply entitled FEAR by Joe Barnett. (I have kept a different pamphlet entitled YOU ARE SOMEONE SPECIAL, but that is a different discussion.)


Lately, I have thought about how fear has permeated my life unnoticed, unidentified, unnamed and unchecked for so long. I have prayed for God to remove my fears or to make me fearless or courageous. Of course, the part after the "or" is simply an invitation for further testing. But it does give an opportunity for "faith to build muscle".


I am being purposely vague here because I don't want to get into the particulars of what happened. It would take longer to get to the point of what is truly important. And, it wouldn't be prudent.


Sunday night, after dark, I was faced with a situation in the driveway of my dad's old house (where I stay on weekends to attend to family business) that temporarily incapacitated me. It took an hour for me to recover and then I realized that what had made it worse was the fact that all that adrenalin spawned by the terror I experienced had been pumped through my system on an empty stomach. After I did what I could to address the situation, ate, and started packing up the van to come home, the symptoms disappeared.


Now, that I look back on the incident, I can see further opportunities to act, instead of returning to a frozen state of fear. Then it hit me that I have been doing that in other places in my life. I have stuffed a lot of fear deep down inside and have allowed it to keep me from acting because I might make a costly mistake or make someone angry who did not understand my intentions, or expose myself to manipulation, etc.


This week, I have risked becoming a little more transparent in some circumstances and guarded in others - but all with the confidence that whatever could be a mistake is simply practice, is correctable and I don't have to worry about being perfect; I just need to be concerned with being alert, honest, gracious, forgiving and forgiven.


So maybe I passed one of my "quizzes" in FEAR 101. I am sure there will be others. But it feels good to know that God brought about something different in me with this experience.