Facing Down Fear

Almost exactly five years ago--nine days short, to be exact--it was Martin Luther King Jr. weekend and we were hit with a sudden snowstorm.  We don't get a whole lot of snow here on the Willamette Valley floor and this was a substantial storm that basically came in one afternoon.  I was heading back out, it was evening, it was dark, and the snow was still coming down.

Up until this time I was not overly fearful of driving in the snow or even the ice.  I was by no means a pro but I could make my way thru it if necessary without having a meltdown.

I was driving "home" that night, several miles out of town, at a decent-for-the-weather speed, the big white feathers filling the headlights and making it seem I was actually piloting the Millennium Falcon thru hyperspace.  You know the kind of night I'm talking about.

It seemed to be going fine.  Until the tug of the wheel was no longer so slight and I knew we were caught in a tractor beam and there was no escaping it.  My Ford Escape was no longer under my control.  I didn't fight it, I knew that much.  "Oh, sh*t... Here we go..." I said as I braced myself and watched helplessly the headlights veer across the road and head straight to the treeline.

Unfortunately the trees were standing tall out of a tall embankment.  I had hit a spot where a creek was going under the road, thus the change in temperature that made the spot slick, and the Escape just slowly browsed its way off the edge of the steep bank, nose-diving into the creek flowing out from under the road.  It wasn't a huge creek, but it was swollen with wintery snowstorm.  Fortunately the creek was flowing out from a very large culvert which protruded out of the bank at the side of the road.  The culvert snagged the underside of the Escape, causing some damage, but keeping us from rolling nose-over-end as the bumper slammed into the creekbed.

I found myself in the driver's seat basically in a standing position, the Escape at a ninety-degree angle, and the creek rushing out from under me and filling the view out the windshield as I stared straight down.  Of course I had no cell service and had to fling the door open, pry myself up and out, and climb up a snowy bank to the road above.  With no one else around I called 911 and they transferred me to the tow company and eventually to my parents for help.

The tow companies were busy that night and once they arrived they realized this was a tricky one.  They got the Escape partway up but it kept trying to roll over and was still hanging up on the culvert.  They decided that they were not equipped to get my Escape out that night.  So we agreed that they would return in the morning with two different vehicles which they could use to pull it the rest of the way up by pulling in two different directions.  The pictures below are after they had it most of the way up.

In the end, I was perfectly fine physically.  The Escape took some damage but was not totaled and was back in my possession just a few weeks later... Just in time for me to take it to Winter Camp where I would already be forced to drive it with students in the snow up to Mount Hood!

In the days following the wreck I didn't drive.  Snow and ice still covered the roads and I was out my personal vehicle.  I was nervous and scared and traumatized and not about to jump into someone else's vehicle to drive in that weather.  This was the third vehicle accident I have been in and I knew that time would make things easier.  But I was also acutely aware that this wreck had virtually nothing to do with human error.  Mother Nature took control and I experienced those terrifying moments of being totally and completely out of control and at the mercy of wherever and however you ended up landing, able only to brace myself for the landing.

In the five years since the creek incident I have slowly become braver at driving in the nasty weather.  All along I have known that I had to force myself to get "back in the saddle" and not allow fear to keep me from driving in the weather.  Now, I am in no way as quick to make unnecessary trips out when the weather is nasty, but I have slowly regained some confidence.  Some.

Actually this year in particular I have noticed that I do not break out in a sweat quite so quickly.  I am not as tense; I can tell that I am a bit more relaxed than I was even a year ago in the same weather.  I first noticed the change on New Year's Eve night as I drove home and some feathers of snow began to fall.  It was not quite the full hyperdrive experience and nothing solid was sticking to the ground, but I went several miles before I even realized that I was not fazed by it at all.  Granted, I had plenty of other heavy stuff on my mind that night, but I was pretty excited to realize that I was basically oblivious--in a safe sorta way--to the road conditions.

This morning was my second test.  We had about six and a half inches of snow at my house this week.  School was cancelled the previous two days, and since I work for the school district, that means I did not have work.  So I was able to avoid driving in any of it and stay home.  But today they called a two-hour delay and I had to go in to work.  Fortunately, I think, it was a late start so it was daylight out and some people had already traveled the road.

It went quite well.  I made it to work just fine and in plenty of time.  All along the way I was conscious of the fact that I was a bit more confident, that I was not enraged at having to drive in it, and that I was not nearly paralyzed by fear.  The further I went the better I felt.  A couple of times I felt the familiar little yank of the steering wheel as we rolled over an icy patch and I felt that rush of tingling start from my lower back and spread to all of my extremities...the adrenaline rush of terror and fear.  But control was maintained, both on the vehicle and on my self.

My therapist once told me that long-term chronic stress can be like the frog being boiled slowly alive.  We get so used to it that we do not even realize it getting worse for us until we are thoroughly boiled.  We get used to functioning in that mode and our tolerance grows higher and higher, which is quite damaging to our well-being.  I learned the same thing a long time ago about chronic pain.  As a Crohn's Disease patient I have a ridiculously high pain tolerance for just this reason.  Yes, I can tolerate and function with pain that most people would be laid up with or even scrambling to the Emergency Room over, but that also means that I overlook things and push thru things that need taken care of sooner rather than later.

In this same conversation, my therapist told me how to deal with that sudden adrenaline rush of terror, fear, stress, panic.  And so today when I finally was parked at work I exhaled and inhaled deep lung-fulls and let out a bit of a bark as I "shook it off", literally, before heading in to work.  And it felt great to let the tension of that adrenaline run its course and flow out before moving on to the next task!

Later in the morning I was still feeling good and successful when I discovered this meme that a friend had shared on their FaceBook:

The thing about our fears and anxieties is that we will never be able to truly overcome them until we are able to face them head on and deal with them.  You will never conquer that fear of heights if you are not willing to spend some time at the cliffs.  I will never grow comfortable driving in the snow and ice again until I just start doing it.  My social anxiety only gets easier by exposing myself to large social gatherings.  A bullied person will only be able to stand up to the popular click who pecks at them by finally standing their ground.

Now, before you say, "That's easy for you to say...", let me just remind you that every one of those examples above are ones that, to various degrees, I have struggled with myself.  So I am not just blowing hot air, I am sharing this struggle with you.  Sometimes I succeed, like today in the driving, and other times I fail miserably.  And sometimes I forget who I am or just find that I need to give up so that I can be stronger later.

Mark Twain is credited to have said, "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear."  We don't have to have it all figured out.  We don't need to march straight from home prepared to climb Mt Everest itself.  It's OK--and healthier--to climb some smaller mountains first.  The meme pictured above tells us that the first step to conquering our fear is to confront it.  That is part of the training that gets us eventually to Everest.  In that process you do not flee from the fear, you do not deny or ignore it.  You are aware of it and you consciously take it on a little bit at a time.

First you make the choice to resist it, to confront it.  Your courage grows and eventually you have it mastered.  It's still there but now you are in control.  The Apostle Paul reminded his apprentice, Timothy, "For God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness; but of power and love and discipline," (2 Timothy 1:7, American Standard Version). You see it is not God's intent for us to dwell in fear but to have power and mastery over the things we might fear; God calls us to discipline, to train, ourselves to overcome those things.

If God is not the author of our fears, then it doesn't take much for us to realize who is the author of such things. You see, fear seeks to take control of us, to keep us from accomplishing what we are called to do. Fear seeks to take the wheel from us and send us sliding right off the road, over the ledge and into the creek head-first. Fear is destructive.

But we are not alone. Paul, in his letter to the church in Rome, writes, "What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us,who can be against us? ... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord," (Romans 8:31, 37-39, New International Version).

Don't beat yourself up over your fears and anxieties. You are human and you are allowed to dwell with the personality and emotions and feelings that God made you capable of experiencing. But know that you are more than capable of mastering them, conquering them even. Remember that the God who made the cosmos loves you and walks this journey with you and has already called you an over-comer. Live into this!

Recognize and acknowledge these things. Be willing to nibble at them a bite at a time until you have mastered them. Share them with a trusted friend, that they might walk alongside you as you work thru it all. Be open to that person sharing their journey with you. Pray together, check in, challenge each other, and be willing to allow that person to call you on your weaknesses. By sharing the burdens together you are taking that very significant first step!

Remember that great things take time to grow and you likely won't conquer those mountains on the first try.  But don't give up, keep chipping away at it, and eventually you'll get there.

It's taken five years but today I was able to drive to work on sheets of ice without breaking a sweat, without swearing once, and without cramping my knuckles (an easy thing when you're on drugs like mine) by clinching the wheel with every yanking of the wheel from the ice.  Yay!