It happened too quickly. He was out the store entrance, dancing down the sidewalk, and heading straight toward the driveway. My mom instinct started to rise. Suddenly just a few feet in front of him, a car pulled into the blind driveway. I yelled at the top of my lungs for my oblivious child to stop… and the car missed him by a few feet. Every traumatic event I witnessed being a nurse flashed before my eyes, and my heart sank as fast as my anger grew. I’ve taught my kids to be careful around cars because I’ve seen firsthand the lethal force they can be, so why did my child dance down the sidewalk and forget to check the driveway? I squeezed his arm tightly as I asked him why he wasn’t paying attention? And at that moment as I realized my anger was a result of my fear of losing my precious child, I let go, and hugged him gently. 2 Timothy 1:7 “For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control.”. It’s a verse I’ve heard over and over again having been raised in the church, but this time, the part of the verse that stuck out to me was “self-control”. See I think God knows that when we are afraid, we freak out internally and/or externally and we lose our ability to control our responses. So we act out and we try to protect ourselves from situations or people in ways that keep us less vulnerable to pain. But God, in His wisdom, is calling us out of fear and into a spirit of self-control. In the moments of fear instead of losing it and reacting in ways that we regret later, we can instead have a spirit of self-control. We acknowledge our burdens and fears and throw them at the foot of the cross. And then, with self-control, we allow God to speak peace into the situation. It doesn’t mean I was wrong to yell for my child to stop running into the driveway, but that it would have looked different after he was safe with me.. Has God given you a spirit of self-control or do you let fear run your moments and your days?
Alisha Keating