Fear

Fear has always been a part of my life.  I'm not a risk-taker or a thrill-seeker.  I'm anxious.  I'm a worrier.  

While worry and anxiety have always been a part of my life (literally, from childhood), fear really planted roots in my heart in October 2007.

I met Megan Harms the summer before my senior year of high school.  Her family had recently moved to the area, and her parents had contacted our church's youth pastor and asked for someone to reach out to their kids.  My youth pastor called me and asked me to step waaaaaay out of my comfort zone and go to the Harms' house to invite their oldest daughter to youth group.

Megan did come to youth group, and we became friends at church and school.  We had an economics class together, and it was in this class that Megan met Brian Henneberg.  A couple years later, Megan joined me at Olivet Nazarene University for our last 2 years of college.  We both became engaged, and I attended her wedding as she married Brian (she also attended my wedding).  

Megan and Brian moved to Tennesee so she could accept a nursing position at Vanderbilt.  I got busy having a billion kids, and we made time for phone calls here and there and lunch together when she came back for visits.  

In 2007 I had become pregnant with our middle child, Griffin, and that pregnancy proved to be one of the most trying times of my life.  Megan supported me in prayer, but she also honestly spoke to me about how she longed for children of her own.

My pregnancy was so difficult from the very beginning, and I felt like there wasn't one day of joy or excitement.  Then a friend of mine threw me a baby shower (a baby "sprinkle"), and I saw this as my chance to finally have just one day that was about excitedly anticipating my baby.  

When I returned home from my baby shower, I was in the middle of telling my husband all about it when he received a phone call.  He started behaving strangely and took the call to another room.  When he got off the phone and returned to me, he was flushed and shaky.  He told me that my brother had called him to tell me that Megan had been murdered.

In the years that have passed since Megan's death, I have learned very little about how and why her life ended.  I know that she endured unspeakable pain that left gruesome, blatant evidence for investigators.  I know that Brian was immediately charged with First Degree Murder, and a jury took very little time to convict him.  I know that I lost a friend.

My list of questions instantly grew so much longer than the list of known facts.  Megan's death triggered the spiritually darkest time of my life.  I have shared with many people that the middle of my pregnancy with Griffin was the darkest time of my life.  It was the hardest part of our marriage, and it was the most suffering I have endured.  But I still held tight to God during that time.  However, the first couple of years after Megan died, I stripped away years of the relationship I had built with God.  I questioned everything about him, and I let him know that I didn't think he did a very good job taking care of his daughter.

I spent many nights crying to Jared and telling him (again) that I didn't understand why God would allow this horrendous thing to happen to Megan.  Her coworkers talked about what an amazing witness she was.  The Megan I knew was someone I looked up to as a Christian.  She was a child of God, a servant of God, and I felt that he had forsaken her.  

I remember Jared telling me about amazing people in the Bible who had served God with their lives and then died in heinous ways.  John the Baptist was beheaded.  Peter was crucified, and many accounts say he was crucified upside-down.  The list of Christians dying in painful and undignified ways is long.  After all this time, the thing I've learned from this discussion is that death does not mean the same thing to God as it does to us.  I look at the pain and suffering endured, but God sees a child coming home.  I had to relearn this lesson when my grandmother, who was my Christian role model, did not die in the peaceful, magical way that I thought she would.  Death does not look the same from Heaven as it does from Earth.

Another conversation that stuck with me took place with my Dad in the weeks just after Megan's death.  I was having trouble shaking my thoughts about Megan's final moments on Earth.  I told my dad that I just couldn't stop thinking about what Megan must have thought as she saw someone she loved taking her life.  My dad's response was that whatever she experienced, no matter how terrifying or awful, she wasn't experiencing it anymore.  I needed to hear that.  I was stuck in a day, a moment.  But Megan wasn't.

This idea came up again when I read The Shack.  I don't want to spoil anything, but I'll just say that God spoke to the father (the main character) about how he had been with the man's daughter when she was killed.  I read those words and applied them to Megan.  I have to believe that God held her through those terrifying moments and carried her to a place where there is no pain.

Through years of struggling, praying, searching, and various experiences, God and I have rebuilt our relationship.  He has answered a few of my questions and helped me to stop asking the others.  It took a lot longer than I expected, but I'm so thankful that God didn't give up on me when I was so unsure about him.  

Through all the years since October 2007, I have struggled with fear.  The big question in my heart, the one I'm not supposed to ask as someone who has been a Christian for 20 years, is:  How can I trust God to protect me and my family when he didn't protect Megan?  To be honest, this question still lingers at times.

I am so blessed.  Seriously.  Other than my recent health issues, everything in my life is going well.  So well that sometimes I worry that it's about to come crashing down.  That's fear.  I have given God my life.  I want to serve him and honor him.  Even though I have surrendered myself to him, sometimes the fear creeps in and temps me.  I have to constantly work through a mental battlefield of obstacles to try to find my way back to a place of trust.  Trust that his will is better than mine.  Trust that he sees and knows what's happening in my life.  Trust that if things don't go the way I want them to, it's God's plan.

I have a new thought to add to all of this, but this is already the longest post in blog history.  I can't help it.  I'm long-winded in both conversation and typing.  I just have a burning desire to share my experiences, even to the point of being painfully vulnerable, in the hopes that it will help someone else.  If you made it to the end of this very long post, whoever you are, please know that God loves you more than you know.

P.S.  You can read what I added here.

One more thing:  Click here to read about the day that God helped me release Megan back into his hands and fully trust him again.

Jessica