Fear and Its Gifts

Big Sur is a dramatic landscape filled with both joy and tragedy. It has been my honor and privilege to have lived here most of my adult life.

Now, as 2018 is maturing and the lessons of the season are being recognized, I want to share my thoughts about what I have learned from fear and how it has awakened me as I coped with making things work even when they were not working.

What happened between the Soberanes Fire of August 2016, the series of landslides and highway closures that led to the isolation of the area for many months,  and the eventual reopening of the highway in October 2017 was a profound and transforming series of events.

It is still a challenge to express what I saw and lived through, and yet I am doing my best to enter into the messages of that time and bring forward the gifts we all were given.

Deeply humbled by this series of events, I am also grateful for the grace I received from so many places and how the support of the Spirit sustained me through all of it.

What I found on the other side is that faith and fear do not coexist.

In my upcoming book, Green Fire, I describe the conversation that I had with fear as I asked it to give way to grace. Each of them is a gift that can only be acknowledged, perhaps never understood.

The paragraphs below come from Green Fire.  The book is still evolving, far from the form I originally thought it would take.  There are times when I am able to write it fluidly and with a feeling of lightness.  Other times, I look at the draft and say "I am not ready yet to do this part of the work."  Here's what it felt like in the winter of 2017 when the roads were blocked and the rains kept coming, the trees kept falling, and there seemed to be no bottom to it all:

“Deep in the darkness and the howling wind, in the middle of the night fear would come. That little voice would wake me up and whisper in my ear that my situation was precarious, and I was a little, tiny person in the midst of a vast wild place…

What if… there were so many things that could go wrong. The litany of potential disasters would appear, and I would have a look.

How was I going to pay my bills? Or was I going to pay them at all? What if there were more trees on the road and I couldn’t get out for two weeks? What if I ran out of everything? Would this go on forever? My adult mind knew that at some point things would change, and that this too would pass.

I made myself listen to my feelings, and then made a decision.  I would make fear a tool, a way forward, instead of being paralyzed by it.  I resolved that when fear appeared, I would thank it for the awareness it brought, and put gratitude in its place. And this is what made that real for me...

Fear became a daily visitor.  Each week when it was time to go out, I felt a sense of dread.  Cut off from my friends along the coast, I had to get back into the very core of everything I learned when I first came to this mountain, and had so very little.  I reconnected with something I had forgotten about myself.  I remembered, then, that fear is an expression of a lack of faith, and I felt ashamed that I felt ungrateful for all that I had.  A house, still standing.  A car that ran.  Customers for my business.  Friends, kind and true friends, who reached out to me and took me in to ease the strains of all the driving.  People who referred me to new customers, and clients who appeared unexpectedly when I needed them the most.

 I would daily express my gratitude for all the grace that I was experiencing.  Doing this changed everything for me.  My body began to relax and change its tenseness to a state of expectancy.  My mind became more resilient.  My spirit felt nourished by being acknowledged.

After all, my house had not burned, like those of so many people I knew.  I had a roof over my head, firewood to keep warm.  I had a little dog who rode along when I went places, and a cat who stayed home.  I had food. I had a chain saw in my car in case there were trees on the road, and a tire pump to reinflate my tires, which went flat pretty often.  I didn't have money to replace them yet, but at least I could keep driving.   And the list went on.  By doing this, I found that my perception of what was going on began to change.  I was able to make contact with a deeper part of my being. 

All the people in the area were bargaining with their situations in one way or another. The thing that kept us going was knowing that something else would be ahead.

Day by day, I learned more and more about how to be truly in the moment, to let go of all the "what if" discussions, and to simply live with what that day had to offer.  It was enough.   Beauty appeared, faith stepped in, and fear stepped aside for another day.

Because writing Green Fire has been so challenging,
 I wrote another book to take the edge off and keep me motivated. 

It's called  
The Essential Excuse Handbook:
77 Ways to Keep From Doing Anything At All. 
Curious?  Check it out:

Have fun with that!

Cheery-o!
Betty