Sitting With My Fear

I am learning how to sit with my fear. I hold it close to me, examine it, stay still with it. I cup my hands around it like a fine, tender nest. I have given up fighting it for the moment. I stop struggling and rest. I allow myself to be afraid as the days pass. This acceptance is a lesson I had to learn in grief, as well. So often I want to resolve the difficult feelings immediately. I want to find answers, fight against my feelings, and make them all better. I do not want to accept them into my life like a precious being. It is painful to hurt. It is awkward to embrace anger when I trained myself so well to be a good girl. Good girls, or course, do not get angry. Strong women fight against their fear and banish it by their heroic good works. At least, these are the tapes that play in my heart. I am trying to learn a new way of walking my path.  

I find as I practice being afraid that the fear diminishes in its power. I have faith that the next step will open up to me, as it has so many times before. Then I will be able to ask for the courage to move forward. By resting, I save my strength to take the next step at the proper time. Then I can acknowledge my fear and allow it to join me, while also finding a way to do what I was afraid to do. I can be fear and courage simultaneously. My fear does not have to control me, and I do not have to control it.