As I sit here this morning, safe in my home, I’m dumbfounded to discover that fear is a choice. I have spent my whole life believing things about myself that I had no idea I was choosing. I have been a prisoner in my own thoughts. Today, I am a free woman and it is the most liberating, amazing, beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced. Did you know you choose fear? Let me explain…

This weekend I spent so far outside of my comfort zone, I may as well have gone to Mars in a rocketship. I took myself, you know the girl who believed walking to the mailbox without perfectly coiffed hair and pressed pants was a sin, to a BSA certified camp and lived in a tent (alone) for three days surronded by many, many men at night, while by day I trained to be a COPE director. Doing this training required me to scale a 40 foot rock wall, rappel off a tower and stand higher than the trees. Granted, I was safely attached to belay lines at all times, but you don’t understand I AM AFRAID OF HEIGHTS, or so I thought. Now I know I was afraid of myself. Afraid to push outside of my own self-imposed limits for fear of failure. Failure meant lack of control and lack of control meant pain and pain hurts, or so I thought.

I was wrong. What hurts is self limitation. Believing you can do anything is empowering. Now I have knowledge and; therefore, I am stronger. It is such a paradox to me that the only way to have more control in your life is to give control up. I was choosing to know better. I was choosing to believe that I was in control despite my self-professed believe that God is in charge. I somehow believed I had the power to choose what was best for me – The solution in the box, the one without risk. The one I wanted to work, but not the one perhaps, predestined for my life.

I walked onto the high course yesterday finally understanding that I was choosing fear. It was then that the earth shift beneath my feet for it was in that moment that I got it – AHA – and than a miracle happened. I felt no fear. My heart rate slowed down, my shoulders felt lighter and I understood what I’ve never understood before. I am not afraid of heights, but afraid of the power I have when I have no fear. More is expected of those that know. More is required, more is on the line, failure becomes more of an option. However, I know now, that in the failure success shines through.

This weekend, I climbed believing that if God brought me to it, He would bring me through it. I rapelled with full confidence in those holding the ropes and in those instructing me, but most importantly, I rappelled, climbed and stood atop the pines believeing in myself. I had made a choice, I had changed my world, and I was a more empowered woman because of it. I pray for the strength to continue to feel this sense of empowerment as I move to step two of the course which will require more fear to be conquered, more lines to be crossed. It is the final leap of faith, and I am so very ready to LEAP and be free.

I’d have never gotten this far without the many gifts that I have been granted along the way. The many who have stood beside me and spoon fed me words I needed to hear. I have been fed words that mattered. I heard them all, sucked them all in, and I am finally, fatefully, willfully free.