Hostage

Have you ever feared anything? I mean a real fear, not something that causes a girly shriek and a laugh. But a serious, unearthing, nerve-shattering, life-consuming fear. When I let everything in my past go and moved on, I laid every burden down except fear. I never knew what a hold it had on me.

It is like a cloak, draped over my shoulders. It is pulled so tightly around me at times that I can scarcely breathe. Trying to shake such a thing would be nearly impossible for its weight is unlike anything I have ever encountered. At times, you can see the life go out of my eyes and hear the change of inflection in my voice, it strangles me so. I have moved, lived, and breathed with this draped over me and it is exhausting. There was a point in my life where it had me so entangled that I didn't even stand up straight. It was like there was something tangible on my back and shoulders for it weighed me down so much.

I have felt stuck at times, as though wearing something made of stone, unable to move, and all I can do is scream, but no one looks up. Sometimes my chest and throat are so tight with fear that I can barely breathe, and at night, sometimes, I wake up drenched in sweat, shaking from head to toe.

But God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love and of a sound mind. However, thirteen years ago, I didn't lay the burden of fear down when I let everything else go and I realize that I am being held hostage to it.