Using Gratitude to Reframe Paralyzed Fear into Hopeful Courage

The prison created by my paralyzed fear almost caused me to miss the gifts God had waiting for me.

We were young parents who had just lost our home in the Great Recession. My mental and physical health had tanked from trying to carry too much, and our marriage was falling apart. The family life we had focused so hard on creating was slipping through my tightly gripped fingers.

The eggshells I had walked on for so long, trying to keep it all together, now felt like razor wire. Hopeful courage wasn’t even in my vocabulary.

The Beginnings of Paralyzed Fear

We started out the gate thinking we had to figure it all out on our own. A sense of rugged individualism had taught us to distrust others. Stubborn isn’t a word strong enough to describe it.

My stubbornness almost cost us the life of our first child.

Mom expressed concern that our newborn son looked a bit jaundiced. I determined in my grand wisdom at the ripe ol’ age of 26 that it was his natural color from our Native American ancestry. My husband is darker skinned, so I attributed it to his genes even though we’re both several generations removed and I was a lily white ghost.

When we saw the doctor for that first week’s checkup, we were immediately sent to the hospital to find our precious newborn’s bilirubin was one point away from needing a transfusion.

You’d think I would’ve learned my lesson then.

More Consequences of Paralyzed Fear

There are so many other instances where that stubborn, rugged individualism crept in. We had not yet outgrown the determination and worldly conditioning to figure it all out on our own. Living in community to us meant giving and serving others, certainly not receiving.

No, never receiving, because that would be considered selfish.

It wasn’t for a lack of our community trying. They tried to mentor us. They came together for our wedding and baby showers and loved on us like crazy. Yet, we felt it was our place to serve them. Wasn’t it our responsibility as the younger generation to focus more on doing for others than for ourselves?

Eventually, my mental and physical health tanked. I was exhausted, trying to balance career, motherhood, marriage and managing a home, with no idea what I was doing. Sure, we all start from somewhere, but insisting on doing it all on our own and thinking it must look a certain way or it wouldn’t be good enough was a mindset that led to more strife than joy.

When we separated and lost our home, I thought all hope was lost. There was a particularly dark moment when I couldn’t even form the words to pray. I suddenly felt God telling me everything would be ok, even if our marriage didn’t work out. I saw a glimmer of hope, but even when the Lord led us back to each other, those razor-sharp eggshells still felt more comfortable than doing anything that might rock the boat. Paralyzed by fear, I was constantly afraid of saying or doing something that would send us backward or make things worse. So, I accepted and settled into what felt safe in that time of paralyzed fear.

Until after my mom died.

The Wake Up Call of Hopeful Courage

When I lost mom to dementia, she was only 64 and I was 35. The one steady presence I could talk with each day, who had become my best friend, was gone. I spiraled into an abyss of hopelessness I hope to never see again.

But my friend, there is always hope.

Just like when I felt God’s tap on my shoulder to tell me I’d be ok even if our marriage didn’t work out, there was a moment in that abyss when I felt connected with mom. Unlike that first God moment, she wasn’t as gentle. It was a tough love moment like we moms often need to employ with our kids. The message?

Life’s too short for you to not live it to the fullest, and as your mom that’s what I want to see. You’re a mom now, isn’t that what you want for your children? So stop with this hopeless fear and get to it!

What could else could I say but, “Yes ma’am!”

Reframing Your Past to Overcome Paralyzed Fear

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:2

Whether that message was straight from God or somehow from God through my angel mom, I needed to be pulled out of my state of paralyzed fear. The cocoon of safety I’d built was not serving me well.

Sometimes we need to get of our safe comfort zone to be able to experience the hope God has in store for us. Fear of the unknown is paralyzing, but that fear can be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Embracing a mindset of anticipation of what God has next, with a healthy balance of knowing he’ll get us through the inevitable hard times, can foster hopeful courage.

Were those times hard? Excruciatingly so. The key within the hope is that the hard times don’t have to crush us. We are created to be resilient and to grow. How do we humans grow best? By failing. By making mistakes. By not having it all together, but learning from the journey through the hard times and allowing them to inform what we do next.

There’s a psychological concept of reframing your past to inform your present and future. At one time I looked at the hard times with a negativity and fear so deep set that it was easy to fall into unhealthy patterns of bitterness and anger. Instead, what if we look at some of those hard times with a bit more love and grace? What if we reframe them in the light of hope and gratitude?

I’m grateful we separated because we both needed the time to figure out who we each were before we could come back together in a healthy relationship.

I’m grateful we lost that house, because a house is not a home. It put our little family of four into a 500-square-foot home that brought us closer together than we’d ever been in that bigger house.

I’m grateful my mind and body rebelled against the stress, because it forced me to slow down and be a more present mom and wife.

I’m grateful for the rocky relationship I had as a teenager with my mom, because it helped me grow closer to her when I became a mom. I especially treasure that time of closeness because it was so short.

I’m grateful for the time I had with mom as an adult, because I now treasure life and want to make her proud as I live it to the fullest.

I had to reframe the past of our separation to have hope our marriage would mend. I had to reframe the past of losing our house to have the hope we could not just survive in that small space, but thrive. I had to reframe the past of not having enough time with mom to be able to fully appreciate the time we did have and to learn to truly live again. With God’s help, you can reframe your thinking around things that have happened in your life and embrace hopeful courage.

It took courage. A hopeful courage that is so much better than living paralyzed in fear. Hopeful courage is living!

What area of your life could be transformed by reframing the past and renewing your mind?