Faith on the Diving Board

 He was there at the end of the diving board. He would tread water for hours watching while I practiced my dives. For years it was our Sunday afternoon ritual . I was 4 years old when we began.  Daddy was there in the deep water, waiting for me. On those Sunday afternoons I believed that if he was there at the end of the board I could do anything.

He would wait, treading water, off to one side. He would look around and give me the sign that it was OK to dive. And I would stroll to the end of the board, tugging my stretchy lavender swimsuit, and bounce in the air before I dove in.

I would rise to the surface sputtering, and look for his face. He would hesitate a moment to let me right myself. I would cough and beam. He would grab the back of my suit and give me a push toward the side. “Swim to the ladder,” he would say. And he would stay out at the end of the board waiting.

I remember the feeling as I paddled to the ladder. The world was perfect: I was diving in the deep end of the pool; there was no pain, and no evil in the world. There was no need or want in my life.  I was a perfect, grinning, sunburned, waterlogged four-year-old, in love with the world, herself and her daddy.

He died when I was 18. In the intervening years life happened to me and to Daddy.  By the time I was 13, he was traveling a lot, and when we did spend the occasional weekend together we did not speak of personal things. There were no talks about plans or dreams. As a teen-ager I felt awkward with my father so I would interview him about his job.  I know a lot about industrial engineering. It filled our time. By then my addictions had begun.

On a July evening, when he was 56, my father had a stroke and died.

Has it affected me? Of course. To have had that closeness and to loss it; to have had those timeless moments of being safe and special and then to lose him when I still needed to ask what happened.

It took years of my life, of other relationships, addictions and even years in recovery for me to wrestle with those two men--the daddy who waited in the deep water and the man who left suddenly, without a word, when I was 18.

Somewhere inside, that four-year-old still wears her lavender bathing suit. She is at the end of a diving board and leaning forward to hear someone say, “You are so special.” There is a deep hunger for those words.  Can I ever get enough?

I’ve learned a lot from listening to that little girl. I know that in romance we get some of that need met, but romance has its own path and after a while no one wants to admire us every day.  Another way to meet this need is with an affair.  Having an affair is a way a four-year-old can twirl in a 40 year-old body and hear again, “You are the only one.”  

In the first five years of recovery I practiced healthier solutions.  I practice in the mirror: “Diane, You are very special.” But all the praise and promises in the present cannot fill a hole that exists in the past.

Later I learned to meet this need in a spiritual way. In the rooms I began to meet people who had a connection with their God or higher power that helped them to live believing that God smiles warmly on them.

So what is the gift from a father who left when we were both too young? It’s this: For a long time I resented the missing memories; no father-daughter chats, no drives to college, no adult conversations. But I have this other thing--a picture in my brain and in my heart of my father still there at the end of the board, smiling and waiting.

Today I believe in a God who looks around my life and says, “Hold on a minute. We don’t want anyone to get hurt; then, “OK, go for it, I’m here.” I have a God at the end of my daily diving board who says to me, “Okay now, catch your breath. I’m here.”                                            

Fasting from Fear

One gift of long recovery is discovering how many of the things we struggle with are simply part of being human. In the beginning we attribute all of our character defects to being alcoholic, but after time and work and making friends with many kinds of people I have learned that everyone is afraid, everyone has some kind of defense, and no one is loved as much as they really want to be. And in America, no woman is happy with her bodyJ.

I also love learning that most faith traditions have been trying to help their members with this pain of being human for ages and ages. Each faith tradition has a version of “surrender” or “offering up” problems; there is an injunction in every religion and every faith tradition to be present, to be quiet, to be in the now, to listen to the voice of something other than fear.

My spiritual director recently said to me that the Gospel of Matthew says that we are “relieved of our afflictions by prayer and fasting.” I had heard those words before but always kind of thought of “fasting” as an extreme, old-fashioned measure. And maybe a tad too sacrificial. But then she explained, using 12-step language, that “afflictions” are like character defects and that what the Gospel writer was saying was, “don’t feed the character defect; don’t give it more food, energy or fuel.” I loved that.

I knew immediately that what I most need to fast from is fear. I feel fear twinges all day and I can feel when my mind wants to feed that fear a huge meal of energy and give it more fuel. What I am learning is that when I sense that start-up to a fear thought or a fear scenario—(and its always some future scenario) I can say, “Nope my fear friend; you are going on a diet”.

And of course I also need prayer to make this work. Praying to stay aware of those first, tiny impulses toward fear, praying for the courage to catch it and not “play with it”, and then praying for the willingness to fast from that fear.

“We are relieved of our afflictions by prayer and fasting.”

Do you have a particular character defect that might benefit from prayer and fasting?

Meditation and Fear

Again and again I take baby steps toward meditation. Years ago--30 years ago--I did TM Transcendental Meditation. Yes, the whole thing. $300 which was a fortune and the arm full of fruit and flowers for the Guru. Looking back I think it was one of my first gestures toward sanity...I was still drinking and in the throes of food addiction, swirling in the madness of untreated ACOA survival...but some part of me wanted what the TM people promised. I wanted freedom from fear and all the pain I was carrying around and trying to medicate.

Yesterday I read about a study reported in Hospital Psychiatry Magazine describing participants who meditated for 20 minutes a day for eight weeks. They showed a 38% reduction in psychological distress and a 44% decrease in anxiety. That in itself, is impressive. And what I want.

Here is a quote from the article:

"Fear, like pain, is a messenger. Pain tells us that something physical needs attention; fear tells us that something emotional needs attention. If we can honor fears by feeling them--we can heal and release them. Fear is not the enemy. Pushing it down or denying it is what causes problems."

Now I think about that quote and I think about the idea that Faith and Fear can't occupy the same space. Wrong. They have to occupy the same space. Feel the fear in--and with--the faith that it can resolve; that it can teach me; that I can be healed by feeling it.

And sit quietly.

That's the hard part still.

Time Management

For years I have bought, read and tried every new time management system. Day Runner, Day Planner, Franklin Covey, FiloFax, and Letts of London--just because they are so beautiful. I make lists--my lists have lists. My Post-Its are color coded. I do laundry during TV and text at the hairdresser. But even after years of recovery I have a knot in my stomache about how much I want to do and how much is undone.

Yesterday it hit me. There is a time managment "system" I have not really tried: The 12 Steps of AA.

Think about it; it's all there. Powerlessness, acceptance, and humility. What can one person do in 24 hours. The arrogance of beliving I can do more. The dishonesty of believing I can fit more in a day, an hour or a minute than will fit. And the cruelty of pushing myself and shaming myself for all that is undone.

Where is the faith in a Higher Power? Where is belief that I am doing God's work--in God's time? And where is peace?

Eskimos

One of my favorite recovery speakers is Bob Earle from New Mexico and one of my favorite Bob Earle stories is the Eskimo story. Earle tells this story when he talks about how he came to find AA and how we might come to find God.

 It goes like this:

There are two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the men is very religious and the other man is an atheist.
Eventually the conversation turns to God and the atheist says to the devout man, “Look, it’s not like I don’t have actual reasons for not believing in God—I even experimented with the whole God-prayer thing. Just last month, I was far out on the tundra and I got trapped in a big blizzard. I could not see a thing and I was so lost. And so I tried God. I got on my knees and I prayed, “God, if there is a God, I’m going to die out here, please help me get back to camp.”
So in the bar, the religious man looks at the atheist and says, “Well for heaven’s sake, you must believe; here you are! You’re alive!”
But the atheist rolls his eyes at the religious man and sighs and says, “No man, all that happened was that some Eskimos came along and showed me the way back to camp.”

If we are in recovery we have certainly met some Eskimos. The tricky part is after we are in recovery for a bit, and we are trying to change our lives, we are not always sure when we are meeting another Eskimo.

Faith and Fashion

Maybe this is a recovering women’s issue? Maybe men have a version of this but I don’t know about it. What I do know is that throughout my recovery I’ve had a running internal debate that goes like this:

Voice One: I’m becoming a spiritual person now so clothing and make up and hair color does not matter.

Voice Two: But I’m a happier person now too because of recovery and feeling good about myself, I want my outsides to match my insides.

Voice One: God doesn’t care about hair color...

Voice Two: God cares about beauty and happiness so if being a blonde or having “warm” highlights makes me happy what’s the big deal?

Even after 25 years it continues. And throughout all this recovery I’ve tried following each voice...each to an extreme perhaps and then let the appearance-pendulum swing the other way.

In my first months of attending 12 step meetings I went shopping for “meeting clothes”. All of my life I had medicated my feelings with substances—food, booze, drugs and always had a corresponding adjustment to my appearance, so why wouldn’t recovery need its own attire? I heard many years later that some women had sponsors who told them to dress up to go to meetings, to look their best, to work recovery from the outside in. “Suit up and Show up” they were told.

I suspect that for the addicted woman who got to the stage of never brushing her teeth or living in sweats that’s a good suggestion, but I was of the other breed that was overly invested in my appearance. So rather than learning to wash my hair and put on lipstick I really needed to experiment with “come as you are” and even “come at your worst” and see that I’d still be liked and accepted.

In very early recovery when I was on my pink and holier-than-thou cloud I decided to give up all make up and hair color, to only buy clothes at thrift stores and to be the “real” me. Luckily I had a sponsor who shopped at Saks and who spent the equivalent of my weekly salary on her hair each month. When I professed my spiritual breakthrough she gave me a long look up an down and said, “I don’t think so…You didn’t get sober to wear sackcloth and ashes. So go get some highlights.”

Then a few years later I was in the throes of some success at work. Promotions came and I was in a good job and enjoying secular success as well as peace in sobriety and recovery. I spent some money with a personal shopper who advised that I needed a power suit, a silky red dress for dating and who went thru my closet with me in a kind of sartorial personal 4th step inventory. (I did get to tell her all my clothing stories and it was a kind of closet catharsis). But after buying all those shiny new clothes I felt a bit too exposed and well, too shiny. I found that most of those new “dress for success” duds belonged more to an idea I had about myself than to the real self who was standing in front of the mirror. So the pendulum swung again.

Back and forth it’s gone over these recovering years. I have a wardrobe I like now and most of it looks like it belongs to the same person. I make those “shopping in pain” mistakes still. (The H.A.L.T. advice should apply to shopping as well as drinking.) But my stages of rock star, tweedy intellectual, corporate power leader and cute girlfriend have gradually integrated into a closet that, for the most part, reflects who I am.

The hook is still there though. My first thought whenever I contemplate an inner change is always to wonder what the external equivalent would be.

So what does a sober, sane, happy woman look like? I think she looks like herself --and her best self—knowing that even that self is constantly changing.

Sleeping with Bread

A favorite book of mine is called, “Sleeping with Bread” by Dennis, Sheila and Matt Linn. It’s about a simple discernment process that the Linns teach—helping us to see what matters and what brings us joy.

My favorite part of this book is the story that gives the book its title. This is the story:

“During the bombing raids of World War II thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps where they received food and good care. But many of these children who had lost so much could not sleep at night. They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food. Nothing seemed to reassure them. Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime. Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace. All through the night the bread reminded them, “Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.”

I love everything about that story –the problem and the simple solution. I can relate to the persistence of old feelings and fears—and how any kind of deprivation can cast a long shadow.

Each time I read it I ask myself: What am I trying to hold on to now to meet a need that was in the long ago past? Are all my shoes a kind of “bread”? Old relationships? Old ways of relating to others? And what new bread might I ask for and hold instead? Bread is a spiritual metaphor in every faith—so what bread can I hold instead of shoes, scarves, resentments, jealousies and my sometimes puffy ego?

Whose Life is It?

Last night I was part of the Memoir Project Performance Series at The Arts Center. Our curator had selected the theme of Mid-Life Epiphany. Here is the piece that I read:


Whose Life is It?

I’m not afraid of death. What I am afraid of is that time, just before death, when I take a last critical look at myself and think, “I wasn’t enough”.

I’m not afraid of physical pain but of the emotions I might face in those last minutes of life. Part of what haunts me is an odd euphemism.

Ten years ago, just this time of year, I got an early morning phone call. I heard the answering machine pick up and heard my oldest sister, Gloria, leaving a message. “It must be Mum,” I thought, “Something’s happened to my mother.”

I picked up the phone and blurted “Glor, is it Mum?” “Oh God no, Di,” she said, “I am so sorry but Joy went into the hospital yesterday to have some tests and she didn’t make it.”

I don’t remember the rest of the conversation. But I cannot forget that odd phrase that Gloria used to tell me that our sister, Joy, had died. I can still hear that slanted delivery; “She didn’t make it.” It sounded as if Joy had failed or had let us down by dying.

The memory of that euphemism makes me think about my own death --and consequently --my life. Will I disappoint someone when I die? Will I die with uncompleted work on my to-do list? Would a more successful, more organized woman, die better?

I think about this sometimes when I am driving to, of course, work. “Whose life is this?” I ask out loud, and “She didn’t make it” seeps back to me. Though outwardly I am successful, busy, and happy, it makes me wonder about the life I am living.

About the time I was having these car talks I was called to attend a corporate meeting at Key Bank; I was to meet with a group of bankers who were to help raise money for a nonprofit cause.

I was ushered into the Boardroom at KeyBank. The room was decorated in shades of gray. My heels sunk into the deep charcoal carpet and when I sat I sank into the lavish upholstered swivel chair.

The CEO opened the meeting. In his first sentence he used the words “Strategy”, “Patrol,” “Attack” and “Deploy.” I could feel myself shrinking. I held onto the tabletop to stop myself from swinging my seat from side to side.

As the CEO spoke I watched the group of bank “volunteers” –All men, in their forties and highly energetic. Each man assumed the same posture, leaning forward, elbows on the table, eyes on the Boss. Each man held a “good” pen. I recognized Gold Cross, Silver Meisterstruck and black Waterman.

I tried to take notes as I typically would in that kind of meeting but I was having trouble identifying the speakers. Usually I rely on a kind of sartorial shorthand. For example, I might jot down: “Blonde in Eileen Fisher thinks new plans are great,” or “Woman, print dress and pearls, disagrees.” Or “older guy with abstract tie wants numbers.” That way, when I went back to my office, I could reconstruct who said what. But here the players were almost identical. Each man was wearing a navy suit, blue shirt and yellow tie.

The feature that most compelled me, however, was a gold key that each man wore in his left lapel. I knew that all Key Bank employees wore these little pins. I had seen them on the women and men I met at Chamber of Commerce meetings. I knew the pin hierarchy: Plastic keys for general employees, red pins for managers, silver for execs and gold for senior VP’s. This was the Gold Key crowd. But what was unnerving was that I had never before seen a group of them together. Here were ten men with white faces, dark suits, similar ties, matching posture, mirrored energy levels, and a Gold Key stabbed into each one right- over- his- heart.

As the meeting continued I began to imagine the lives of these men. Some we’re on first marriages and others second, some had one child, some two. I could guess at their similar mortgages by the tension around their eyes and the way they leaned forward, constantly nodding to the rhythm of the CEO’s words. I wondered how they had gotten here. Did they notice that they were almost the same guy?

My eyes kept going back to the pins. The little gold keys seemed to have each man pinned. “You won’t wear that key to chemotherapy,” I heard myself think.

For those two hours I felt so superior. I don’t wear a pin to mark my loyalty to my organization, and though there are days when I wear a suit, I also have days of corduroys and sweaters. “Whose life are they living?” I thought, but “Whose life am I living?” followed without a pause.

The next shift in my thinking came around an event. Months before I had signed up to attend a fundraising gala. This particular event was an important place to see- and –be- seen.

But by Thursday of the event week I was tired. On Friday I felt anxious rather than relaxed. Saturday morning, driving to Saratoga to pick up my dress for the party, I begin to cry. “Whose life IS this?” came racing back. The party was important, but to whom and why?

As I drove through the postcard beauty of Fall in upstate New York, I thought: “This is crazy; this is no time to go to parties, this is the time to sit in the back yard.” In the car I spoke my debate out loud. I said to the car, “If I go to the party it will be good for me at work. If I go to the party I’ll get more points with my boss and social points, too.” But another voice inside of me asked: “But where will you cash in the scorecard with all those points?”

That question stopped me cold. I’ve been at the collection point many times. In the last ten years I’ve been to seven family funerals and made hundreds of visits to Intensive Care Waiting rooms. I regularly sat beside my comatose mother who, in her life had earned thousands of points but was now unable to redeem a single one of them for one minute of consciousness. How could I forget this simple fact: We turn in our scorecards in hospital beds, funeral homes and cemeteries.

Now I wish I could say that after that moment of enlightenment I tossed the gala tickets out the window and sang all the way home. But- I- didn’t. That’s the kind of story that makes it into “Chicken Soup” books. The hard news is that the decision to say “no” wasn’t easy.

The rest of my day was agony. I rationalized, I debated. I knew that I wasn’t going to the party, but first I had to sit in my backyard and cry.

Just as I am sure there is a high price for taking off one’s gold key pin , each choice we make takes us further from OR closer to some other thing, and each choice has a consequence. On the phone my friend Brigid read to me from Thomas Merton: “Each choice we make takes us closer to God, and further away from others, often others who love us.”

The day after my no-Gala experience I woke to one of the most beautiful days . I sat in my backyard as Fall was happening around me. I could hear the leaves letting go. My husband came outside to sit with me and we watched the leaves fall. “How do they know when to do that?” he asked. We laughed as I told him my version of an Al-Anon meeting for leaves: The very wise leaf says, “Well, you have to trust, you have to just turn it over and let go.” But the younger leaf, the one with “control issues” says, “Oh, no, I’m not letting go, I’m staying with the tree. We don’t know what’s down there.”

So what does it come down to then?

Faith, I think

Oh, we want so badly for life to be Sure. And clear. And settled. We want to do the right thing. But we make our lives from a set of choices and we can only hope we are making the right ones. But it’s a certainty that the right thing for someone is attending the gala and for someone else it is taking off the pin.

So whose life is it? And where do we turn in the scorecards? We don’t. That’s what makes it so hard. It’s easier to have faith in a score keeping system with a Right and a Wrong, a Good and a Bad. But there isn’t one. We make a life with choices. One- terrifying –exciting--choice at a time.

Faith: What is it Good For?

Here is a gem of an insight I picked up today from Brene Brown’s blog—(I’m loving this woman—her TED talk on authenticity and now her blog too). But here is what I read this morning and it hit home so hard and so well:

She writes, "As a lover of all things certain, I wanted faith to work like an epidural; to numb the pain of vulnerability. As it turned out, my faith ended up being more like a midwife - a nurturing partner who leans into the discomfort with me and whispers "push" and "breathe."


I don’t know about you but I have been  trying to use faith as an epidural, thinking, “Come on God take this feeling, take this fear.” And thinking there was something wrong with my faith if I still felt fear, anger, disappointment etc. Chastising myself with the idea that if my faith was stronger I’d be all that peace that passeth understanding, blissed out and calm in a crisis. Well, duh, yeah I was thinking I could use faith as a drug.

But Brown’s insight and wise phrasing—not an epidural but a midwife. It’s a whole new way of thinking about faith and the value of faith and the investment in my spiritual life.

Faith Flies

Anyone who gets on an airplane has faith. They may claim to not be a believer but they believe in something big-- much bigger than themselves. They believe in physics like I believe in God.

Last week I flew home from Cleveland late at night. Sitting by the window in a small plane I could feel how fast the plane was moving. We were hurtling through darkness. I knew that the pilot couldn’t see anything. Only the little switches on the control panel might have any meaning. Yet when I looked around inside the cabin the other passengers were sleeping, reading, playing on IPods and Kindles and calmly entertaining their babies.

There in the dark, where no one could see anything, we were moving into blank space hundreds of miles an hour and simply thinking, “Oh we’re on the plane.”

That is faith.

Looking for Signs

I laugh now at how many times in my life I have prayed for a sign to let me know if I was on the right path or for help in making a decision. In very difficult moments I have begged for skywriting from the universe and just last week I told a friend that I’m still waiting for an envelope from God with my name on it. Maybe I watched too many episodes of Mission Impossible as a kid, but part of me wants instructions that spell out exactly what I should do with my life.

I know God doesn’t work that way, but I also know I’m not alone in wanting him to. Some people flip coins or watch birds or follow the crude metals index. Others keep psychics in business and ensure that books on spiritual guidance top the bestseller lists. I’ve tried it all and I’ve been to Tarot readers, thrown the I Ching and I have a well-worn set of Rune stones.

Years ago when people close to me were dying and I was tearfully demanding to know God’s will, a friend who was more experienced in grief chastised and reassured me by saying, “Gods will is what is”. The simplicity and profundity of that statement silenced me for a while.

But I come back again to wanting to know, and often it’s at this time of year and there’s a good reason. As the winter begins and we are faced with dark and cold there is a pull from deep in our bones that drive us to seek light and answers. The need for light at this time of year is so great that we adapted culturally to give it to ourselves. We've had Hanukkah, now Solstice and  soon Christmas, all great stories about finding light.

The part of the Christmas story that has always meant the most to me is that of the three wise men making their journey, traveling on a hunch, a belief, and their deep wanting. They had studied the sky for years and then they saw their sign.

In his poem, Journey of the Magi T.S. Eliot wrote: “At the end we preferred to travel all night, sleeping in snatches, with the voices singing in our ears, that this was all folly.”

Of course that is the problem with star following. You just don’t know. We see this most painfully now looking at the news. Stories of young men and women as heroes in war and others, the same age who commit terrible crimes. All of them following their stars. But how do you know until you show up whether there’s going to be a baby or a bullet?

So the wise men’s lesson is all about faith: We do our best, we study, we consult with others, we try to be wise men and women, but we have to get on our camels, bring our gifts and hope we are doing good.

This is solstice week and these are our darkest days. We cope in the most ancient of ways. We go toward the light--to neon and the mall, to crowds of shoppers, even as our ancient relatives were drawn to stars and the fire.

Through all of this we’ll read our horoscopes. We’ll hope our loved ones will be spared the only thing that no one can be which is death. We’ll look at the night sky and try to believe. No wonder a baby born in a barn is a great story. No wonder we look for signs.

No Crystal Ball

My meditation book this morning quotes from Psalm 119: 105: “Your word is like a lamp for my feet and a light for my path.”

It hit me: A light for one step at a time, not a crystal ball to show the entire future.

Dang! I would so much prefer the crystal ball or one of those bright sweeping spotlights that show everything. But the promise is a lamp.

It reminds me of the advice to writers from Robert Frost. He said: It’s very hard to drive in fog when you can only see as far as your headlights. But in fact you can drive a very long way and you can get home if you simply proceed to drive looking at only the road your headlights reveal.

Writing too.

Life too.

Get out of Gods Way

When I was very new to AA I heard a woman speak in a meeting and what she said made me truly want recovery. The woman was telling the group that the day before her daughter had been hurt in an accident near their house. The woman said that got into the ambulance with her daughter and she began to pray that her daughter would be okay and that God fix this situation. And then, she said that she stopped and changed her prayer. Instead she began to pray, “God help me to get out of your way.”

I was stunned by her words and I knew then that I wanted what AA people had and I understood that what this woman had came from being in this program.
That was more than 20 years ago. I still want it.

God help me to get out of your way.

A Partner with God

In my 20’s I returned to college as an older student. I had no money, and I lived on school loans. I sold my car, clothes, stereo and records to be able to go back to school. I was awarded an internship in Washington, DC. and I said yes even though I had no money. I borrowed some money for housing and ate as cheaply as possible. Every week I would measure out my peanut butter and crackers and instant oatmeal packets. Other women in my dorm who had family support and paid internships would bring me doggie bags from the Georgetown restaurants they went to at night. I was scared and hungry but I was happy. I was happy to be in school, happy to have an exciting internship, happy to be in DC and to be able to visit all the free museums and go to free lectures and concerts every weekend.

What sustained me in those months was a series of pamphlets from Norman Vincent Peale. They were the positive thinking, faith in God, personal story pamphlets. I hung onto them for dear life.

In some ways my recovery and my faith in a higher power were beginning then even as my addictions were still sending up their first shoots.

There was one message that I copied from one of the pamphlets. I carried this in my wallet and sometimes cried reading it when I got really scared because I was almost out of rent money or when I didn’t know how I’d get back to Pennsylvania. I had to change the word “man” to “woman” and “him” to “her” but here it is. I keep this in my daily meditation book and I need to read it today:

“A woman who works in partnership with her God becomes self-reliant, positive and optimistic and undertakes her work with the constant assurance of success. She therefore magnetizes her conditions. She draws to herself the creative powers of the universe.”

Faith and Fear

Here is another AA heresy. One of the platitudes in AA is that “faith and fear cannot occupy the same place.” But it’s not true. We do people a disservice when we say that. People of faith also have fear. Moses had fear in the desert. Daniel had fear in the lion’s den. Jesus had fear; he sweated blood at Gethsemane. Faith is not the absence of fear. Faith is doing the next sober thing even while feeling terrible fear.