What Are You Afraid Of?
“What are you afraid of?” She asked me in the gentlest of ways. It was not condescending, not haughty, not judgmental, but a comforting invitation to expose fear, name it, call it out, and then literally put my head down and bring forth life.
For context: I was at home, in a blow-up birthing pool, in the middle of active labor and transition (the most intense part of labor when baby is about to be born) with my son.
While she was not technically my midwife, she was a midwife I had just met that night who was there to assist mine, but most importantly she was a God-fearing woman coming alongside another woman in her most vulnerable state and empowering her through. Whether she realized it or not, her bravery and wisdom to ask that question directly exposed the perpetrator we all know as ‘fear,’ and when she took that initiative to expose it, she ensured it was not allowed to have an impact on the birth of my son. The act of exposing fear rather than succumbing to it redirected my focus back to trusting and surrendering to Almighty God and His sovereignty in the midst of childbirth.
“What are you afraid of?” she asked.
“Tearing,” I said. Tearing scared me—the feelings and sensations I was feeling, that which I had never experienced before, scared me. I don’t mean to be graphic, but the intensity of the pressure of what’s called the Fetal Ejection Reflex felt like a cannonball was about to shoot out of me and blow my lower half to smithereens. That’s what I was scared of. (I was afraid of pain, and a completely irrational ending).
She nodded and said calmly, “Okay, and if you do, we’ll sew you back up.” Wisdom and peace exuded from her, and even in the rush of the transition stage of labor, I remember the peace that came over me—enough for me to vividly remember the feeling of it even now as I’m recalling this moment as I write. And almost immediately, ‘fear’ was completely disarmed, and my focus returned back to my Father.
And then my body relaxed and remembered the scripture I clung to throughout my pregnancy for this very moment, Isaiah 26:3, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.” While my mind was focused and concentrating on breathing my son “down and out” through each wave, ‘fear’ was squelched, and my spirit was being redirected to the Lord and thinking of Him, trusting Him, surrendering to Him with each contraction.
I clearly remember I didn’t want to push “out of fear” (as in, “if I just push really hard and get him out it will all be over sooner”) and force my body to tear because of that, so, I held him in and resisted the urge to push until I had no choice; my body had taken over, and it was in charge of delivering my son. When it said push, with the assurance that the Holy Spirit was right there with me and the encouragement from my midwife, I pushed. Although I do not remember feeling it, he moved further down the birth canal, and I remember my midwife would routinely listen to his heartbeat and I can remember hearing it when he was right there at the end of the birth canal…steady, peaceful, healthy. Another surge came; I pushed again. This time, he crowned.
“Wow. There he is…,” my husband said from over my shoulder. Unbeknownst to me, his head had actually been birthed which meant the peak of it was over.
“Really??” I said incredulously. I could not believe it.
And then I felt my body ask me to surrender one more time… I pushed again, literally roared like a lion, and then I felt immediate relief. Seconds later, my midwife asked, “Francesca, would you like to pick up your baby?”
Once again, in complete incredulity, I said “Really??” I looked down to see him right there and immediately I reached down, drew him out of the water, and laid him on my chest. I remember all I could do was breathe and cry and thank my Father, almost in disbelief of what just happened.
“What are you afraid of?” The timely question the midwife asked me forced me to pause and slow down—specifically, it made my mind slow down and quieted my spirit, and fear was stopped in its tracks as a result. I can even hear my breathing slow down in the video of my son’s birth and see my face relax. In retrospect, had I given myself over to fear during my labor… I would have been screaming, pushing needlessly “just to get him out,” crying, exhausted… terrified. I would have been angry because I was tired and scared of the sensations and unfamiliarity… and surely, my body would have acquiesced to the directionals of fear and torn pretty badly, because I would have been pushing “to get him out and be done” rather than easing him out and letting my body intuitively take its cues from her Maker—who was in the room. It was a trust and a surrender I had never experienced until that moment, and in truth, nothing could have prepared me for it other than keeping my mind stayed on God.
“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”
Isaiah 26:3 ESV
[Ladies, I recognize that every woman’s birth story is different and uniquely her own. My claims are unique to my birth experience, and what I believe could have happened particularly with me. I understand that sometimes things happen beyond our control and that quick, hard decisions have to be made. If you did not have the birth story you had planned and hoped for, I am so, so sorry. And please know that your Father is not absent from those details—He is in all of them, and He will use it for your good and His glory.]
Right in the intensity of the moment, God gives us the strength and the capacity to pause, identify, and expose.
So, name it.
Call it out.
Identify and put a word to it, even if it sounds silly.
It takes me a while to figure out what I’m feeling, as discussing emotions was not a common practice in my childhood home, which makes me all the more thankful for a Good Father who knows me and searches my heart even when I’m trying to be diligent and identify such feelings. The Bible says,
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
Romans 8:26-27 | ESV
We don’t need to find the perfect word to perfectly identify what it is we’re feeling, afraid of, or plagued by. He knows, and He intervenes. All we have to do is draw near with a heart postured upright, ready to receive, and He will kneel down from His throne to listen and draw near to us.
“Drawing near” could look like going into your closet and praying aloud, putting pen to paper and coming to the Lord in prayer through writing, being vulnerable with your spouse, calling a trusted friend or mentor who loves the Lord, scheduling the appointment with the therapist, or talking with your pastor. Exposure requires vulnerability, and vulnerability requires humility—and from a flesh perspective, that’s scary; man is known to reject such bravery and write it off as weakness. However, from a Kingdom perspective, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17 ESV). It takes God-given strength to make ourselves vulnerable… and goodness, does He delight in it. And, when exposure happens, freedom will follow.
I’ve learned and experienced the enemy feasts on ambiguity and silence. Have you felt that before? The overwhelm of feeling something so intensely but you have no idea what it is, and it causes our minds to go awry and get a little too creative… (hence, me thinking I would explode like dynamite during labor—completely irrational), but once you’re able to identify it, the intensity is almost immediately distinguished.
For example, I had another “what are you afraid of?” moment quite recently—fortunately, not the “in the middle of active labor” kind, but feelings of great anxiety had been pressing in on me all the livelong day. I felt the heaviness in my chest, I felt the flutters in my stomach, my breaths were shorter, and I could not figure out what in the world it was. Until my husband and I were talking on the couch after the babies had gone to sleep that night, I expressed what I was feeling and how I was frustrated because I couldn’t figure out why or what it was. We volleyed back and forth for a few minutes trying to nail it down, and then while we were talking I had stumbled into the thought, “I am so scared of messing them [my children] up…” and then I broke into sobs with pain in the back of my throat… that was it. That’s what I was afraid of. And then I felt peace immediately. After pinpointing what had been making me anxious all day, fear had been defeated again, and every tear I cried out for those next few minutes made way for peace to move in and permeate throughout until I was “beside still waters” again (Psalm 23:2 ESV).
Fear compels us to do and think the most ridiculous things, and it uses our past traumas against us to carry out its cowardly work. And while it forces itself upon us in countless disguises such as anger, anxiety, depression, pride, envy, etc., it actually does not have a leadership role in our lives at all… unless WE permit it to. “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7 ESV). We were never woven into being with a spirit of fear; we are children of God, each made in His likeness; we have His breath in our lungs and His blood in our veins. The same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in us.
“You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you…if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”
Romans 8:9, 11 | ESV
When you shine a light on a thief in the night, he runs. Because that’s what cowards do… they work in the dark and then run as soon as they’re exposed. They know they have no power in the light. As children of Almighty God, the Light himself, we have the upperhand, friends. John 3:20 (ESV) says, “For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” And that’s what Jesus Christ did while He was here on earth. He exposed, He ticked off and offended many, and He set captives free.
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1 | ESV
So, “What are you afraid of?”
Expose it.
Name it.
Call it out.
Because in Jesus’s Name, ‘fear’ has no place in the lives of believers, and there is nothing we can expose that will cause God to recoil; that’s an enemy-curated lie. He already knows, and He loves us fiercely still. Draw near to Him, and expose.
