Oh So Scared...

I am probably the most chicken-hearted person I know. In all likelihood I could sponsor (and win) a reality show entitled "Are You More Paranoid Than Courtney?" I suppose that I should be rather grateful that although I suffer from intense, irrational fear, it is also intense, selective fear ranging in categories from the ridiculous to the more universal.

For instance, I have an unearthly paranoia of saliva. Can't stand it. Creeps me out. I don't drink after people. I don't share utensils, or eat off the same plate. This emerged around age 6 when I calmly told my father that I wasn't going to let him kiss me on the mouth any more. "I'm sorry Dad, but no one's ever going to do that again. Well... at least not until I'm married." And no one has. (Granted, saliva paranoia was only part of that decision...)

But I also have this unearthly fear of losing my family members. I have nightmares about them all dying in car accidents, and when I leave my house after Sunday lunch I have to mentally chant over and over, "God is all-powerful. I don't need to be afraid." because I'm convinced that I will lose someone I love in a car accident.

I also occasionally get this fear that everyone else has been raptured and I've been left behind. I blame those horrible "Left Behind" books for this one. In these moments I usually call everyone I know until I get a hold of someone who convinces me that the rapture did NOT occur. At which point I breathe a sigh of relief and vow to read something more soothing than Revelations the next morning in my quiet time.

But the fear that I struggle with the most is that of not being good enough. It's a self-debasing, egocentric, sneaky pride and self-focus. And it has the most awful habit of sneaking into every area of my life. I'm paranoid that my paper wasn't "above average," that my exam was a "B" (yes. I'm a nerdy loser.) I'm paranoid that I won't get into grad school, that no one will want me to serve at church, and that I'll be the only person in U.S. history to flunk the GRE. But there is an even bigger fear (as compared to those above which only emerge in moments of academic/social pressure).

I'm paranoid that I'm not good enough to be loved.

And that's why, on days like this one, I'm thankful that God, knowing the necessity of this verse, placed it in His Word multiple times:

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.

**I Chronicles 16:34, II Chron. 5:13, 7:7:3, Ezra 3:11, Psalm 11:5, 106:1, 107:1, 118:1 and 29, 136:1.**