The Existence of Fear

Fear. "An unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat." is how the dictionary defines fear. Now if you were to ask me how many times i have been accused of being fearless I would tell you that I have lost count. Which is true. It happens more often than you think. But that's just because the last thing I want is people thinking that I'm afraid of anything. But the select few people in the world that really know me, know as well as I do that I'm not fearless. No one is fearless. Fear is in all of us and while some of us may hide our fears with strength or courage that doesn't mean it isn't there. We're all afraid of something, whether that be failure, judgment, or the dark. We also all react to it differently, some of us try hiding, others try running, and at some point we all eventually learn to stop running, and stop hiding, and actually face our fears. Because if we can't face our fears than they'll never be anything other than that. They'll never go away. But we can't just be fearless by facing our fears. Some of us will always have the same fear, and some of us might even develop new ones after facing old ones. But my point is, that no matter the fear, it's always a hard thing to face for one reason or another. Most everyone has reasons for being afraid of what they're afraid of. A friend of mine helped me realize today that I am afraid of opening up. Now, here's what I'm thinking, for 17 years opening up and talking to people has not come easy, there have been a select few people in my life who I can actually have a conversation with, and the idea of me being afraid of it never drifted into my mind until my friend mentioned that maybe it was fear that was causing me to lock up. And that got me thinking, maybe he was right. After more contemplation on the matter, I came to realize that I don't open up because I'm afraid that I'm burdening people with my issues, and that's the last thing I wanna do. And I'm also afraid of the reaction that I might get. Not exactly judgment, but more like what they'll say if I open up. What if I open up and they say something mean, or even worse, they don't say anything at all? What happens then? Then it would just go more towards me feeling as though I was only burdening them. It is a problem, one that I do need to work on. That's kinda how fear works though, it prevents us from doing something often times. I don't know about you, but I'm not the type to admit what I fear. But it takes a lot of work to make people think you're fearless. So what do you do? Be open about your fears or make it easy for people to think you're fearless? I'm working on finding a happy medium. And until then, fear is something that lives in all of us. Something that we all eventually face. Not easily, but there comes a time in everyones life when what they fear stares them in the face, and you have the option to do one of three things. Run. Hide. Or do something about it.

24 Hours

       If you knew you had only 24 hours left to live, hypothetically, what would you do with those 24 hours? Would you spend all the time you could with friends and family? Would you say goodbye to those you love? Would you do the last few items left on your bucket list, just for good measure? Or maybe you just might spend the day doing everything you love, or perhaps reflecting on the life you lived, or going back to your hometown that held so many memories. Now, what would you do if you knew that someone you loved and cared about was going to die in 24 hours? What would you do then? Leave them be or spend every minute that you can with them? Do everything they love to do, just so they can do it one last time? This last month I came to realize that I had never really asked myself these questions until someone I cared about died. And when that did happen, I was left wondering why. I was left to think about everything I could've said and should've done but never got the chance to. And with that I started asking myself what I would do if I had 24 more hours to spend with this person before she died. And I actually did make a list of everything I would've done. In the grieving process I have come to find that it's easy to get lost in regret. You think of all the things you didn't do or say, and you regret having not done or said those things, and it's hard to wrap your mind around the fact that they're gone, and you'll never be able to do or say those things.
       Recently the Lord has been teaching me that it's okay to regret some things, but we shouldn't dwell on that regret, and that time is fragile and precious, and that since we never know when our last 24 hours will be, we should cherish every hour as if we only had 24 left. We don't spend a lot of time thinking about how we might die, or when we might die, so it's understandable that we don't always spend our time the way we should. But while 24 hours seems like a long time, it can go by quick, and often times we don't stop to reflect on how we spend the 24 hours we have in a day. And while there's nothing wrong with that, I think it's a shame that we don't. I don't know about you, but if I were to have been given 24 hours of warning before a friend died, I would've watched the sunrise and the sunset with her, and I would've told her the God loves her, and wants nothing more than for her to be in Heaven with Him. Because believe it or not, 24 hours isn't long. And I would want nothing more than for the person I care about to be at peace and enjoy every last minute of it..

Until Next Time,
              -Alayna

Hey There

Hey there, since this blog is new I figured after my first post I might introduce myself to those of you happen to be reading this and don't know me. My name is Alayna, I'm 17 and fairly knew at this. And by "this" I mean blogging. I've been writing since I knew how to hold a pen and use that pen to put actual words on a piece of paper. And needless to say, I love it. It's a passion of mine amongst other things. If you read my first post you know my writing style, it's how most of the things I write are gonna look like. Topical, hopefully to the point, and with any luck they'll more than likely teach you something. At least I really hope they do.
Now that you know a bit about me I hope you'll stick around and see what I have to say. And I sincerely hope that you might just find something worth reading.

Until Next Time
           -Alayna

When You Hit a Wall...

           Being sore is a part of daily life as an athlete. You work hard and train hard and afterwards it’s only natural that your muscles get sore. And it hurts, really bad. But thats actually a good thing believe it or not. You see, when your sore after a workout, it means that your muscle tissue is tearing, and it causes a pain, which is soreness. Now that sounds pretty bad and if it tears to much then it can be. But in reality, when your sore and your muscle tissue tears, then that means that it’s working to grow back even stronger. So in short when your sore from a workout or some sort of physical activity, it just means that you’re getting stronger.

           As Christians, and as human beings, we struggle with things. We hit walls, meaning, we meet people and we lose people. We love people, just to end up hurting because they leave or they hurt you or for some reason they can’t be around you anymore. We miss people so much it hurts. And then there are always those walls that don’t so much involve people. The walls that involve life in general. The walls that we run into and we just can’t bring ourselves to get back up. And we want to look to God and we want to pray and ask for help, and sometimes we do, but not all the time. And we sit down and we wonder, why on earth is this happening to me; whatever “this” may be. And we can’t quite bring ourselves to find an answer…

           I like to think about emotional pain as a sort of physical soreness. Sometimes we hit walls, and something inside of us tears and it makes us sore, it makes us hurt on the inside.  But the good news is that we won’t be sore forever. Sometimes, something inside of us needs to tear in order for us to get stronger, and grow. When something tears on the inside, it may take a while to heal, but when it does you’ll be stronger than you were before. So yes, bad things happen. Life isn’t easy. But if your in a ton of pain, physically or emotionally, chances are, God’s using that to help you grow, and to help make you stronger. But He won’t ever throw something your way that you aren’t strong enough to handle, and if by chance He does, you can trust that He’ll carry you through it. 

Hebrews 12:1

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with endurance the race set before us,"