Fearless Woman

 

 {Mom, in New Zealand}

When I was 9 or 10 years old, one of my friends wanted to survey my mom about fears that women have for a school project.  Because the survey was written by a 10 year old, the question read something like this:

What do you fear the most?
a) Spiders
b) Snakes
c) The Dark
d) Other:______________

And my mom insisted on choosing d) and writing in, "I fear God, and because of Him I fear nothing else."

At the time, I thought that was an answer that was remarkably unhelpful for the purposes of my friend's assignment.

Yet, that little statement of hers from well over a decade ago has stuck with me all this time. Likely because not only did she say this--she lives it.

This mom of mine lives what I would call a fearless life. What would you call the life of a women with more than half a dozen {homeschooled} kids, who's been all over the world and lives in her favorite place, who has masterfully taken on job positions usually reserved for people with much higher educational attainments, who handles the transition to becoming a mother of adults gracefully, who refuses to hide her favorite hobbies just because they are highly unfashionable (*ahem* Korean dramas, Sudoku, and jigsaw puzzles), who goes to classes to learn a new language from a teacher half her age, and who can host a meal for any number of guests at the drop of a hat (i.e. my engagement party, which was at our house, had over 100 guests, and was planned in less than two weeks)?

My mother may occasionally herself inspire fear and awe--but she simply refuses to fear everything that she considers to be not worth fearing (which, as we've already noted, seems to include everything but the Maker of the universe).

I love that my mom taught me from a young age that just because I'm a woman, my life doesn't need to be characterized by fear and anxiety about scary situations. Mom will rejoice and she will mourn. She recognizes as well as anyone else, or better, that this world is broken, horrifyingly so. But what she won't do is be afraid.

Because of her, I know that living without fear of things that don't deserve our fear is possible, and it's what I strive for.