“To overcome fear, here’s all you have to do: Realize the fear is there, and do the action you fear anyway.” (Peter McWilliams)
Every day for the past year I logged into my WordPress account to do my daily work on this blog, and each time I did, I’d see an indicator glaring at me, letting me know a new software update was ready to be downloaded for a plugin that’s been a backbone to my site since the beginning. The last time I updated this plugin was way back in mid-February of 2019 when a crash occurred during the middle of it, taking my site down along with it. It caused me much anxiety, mostly because I didn’t know what to do at the time to correct the problem. Even worse, it had been the second time I had experienced a major issue when updating this plugin. After unsuccessfully trying to find another plugin that could replace it, I spent a considerable amount of time getting my site corrected, along with updating to the latest version of this plugin. Ironically, after I did, a new version immediately became available, causing me great fear and stress. I decided to put the update off because of it. Days, turned into weeks, turned into months, till eventually a year went by without me hitting that update button. The version number continued to grow, while I didn’t, as fear kept me a prisoner. Software is a funny thing though. If you don’t keep current with its updates, eventually problems will occur. That’s why I decided one evening in the midst of fear and frustration over it all, to tell God I’d do the stupid update if my plans the next day got cancelled somehow. And wouldn’t you know, the next day the friend I was supposed to spend it with cancelled because he was sick. So, I kept my promise and made sure the update button got pressed that day. Thirty seconds after, the update had successfully completed with no issues.
All that fear…for an entire year…for what?! I gained nothing from it and most likely could have updated the software long ago with no problems. Life has been a lot like that for me over the years. Putting things off that I was afraid to face, until the pain of not doing so essentially forced me to work through it. And every time I did, the pain of working through it was far less than the pain of me sitting in all that fear for as long as I did!
I’m tired of living in fear over the dumbest of things like a software update. Living in fear has robbed me of being at peace and experiencing joy. I’m thankful for the reminder this software update gave me, that it’s never worth putting something off, when the only reason for doing so is out of fear.
Dear God, fear has consumed me so many times in my life, keeping me a prisoner more than not, until I finally become ready to tackle whatever the issue is. I pray for the strength to face all those fears and to stop letting my life remain on hold because of them.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
