Day 15: Raising Fearless Children (Part 1)

I loved climbing trees as a child. Ok, I love climbing trees as an adult and really should do it more often, but I digress. We had a row of cherry trees in the side yard of our house that I would spend long, humid, lazy summer afternoons in. I'd climb as high as I could and nestle in the crook of a limb for hours. Reading, dreaming, and well...hiding from the rest of the world. I'm a short girl and so scaling the heights, even of a cherry tree, was a vastly different view. My childhood was anything but typical and safe, but in those moments when I was free to climb a tree or run barefoot through the field adjacent to our house I was fearless.

God has not created us for fear.  He tells us this:

For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.
(2 Timothy 1:7, emphasis added)

Fear is a learned behavior. This point could be argued, but I can attest to this in my own life so I feel secure in saying that for me it was a learned behavior. We lived across the street from my great grandmother ("nannie" for short). Nannie was a notorious worry wart. I often spent the night with her or had to walk home from her house after dark. She was as notorious for her racism as she was her worrying and she convinced me that the migrant workers who worked the tobacco (I'm a North Carolina girl) fields around our house, primarily Mexican men, were likely lurking in the trees in our yard and would pounce on me if I didn't scurry home quickly.

Feel free to laugh. 
{I'm from the South. I know racism and I know funny. In some cases they are one and the same.}

My point is that she planted that seed of fear in my head. Was it true? No, I can attest to the fact that not one Mexican man ever jumped out of a tree in my front yard. Did I believe her frightening tales? Judging by the amount of times I set the world record for the 40 yard dash crossing back to my house I will say "yes".

My daughter is less than a year old right now and she is fearless. She is fearless to the point that I am uncertain that she can feel pain. She frequently falls, bonks her head, and pops right back up unaffected in an effort to go somewhere, experience, feel something new. I generally try not to get overly motherly every time she gets a bump or bruise, but it can be tough. I want her to be safe. I want her to be wise and not run blindly and headlong (quite literally these days) into things that are bad for her, but there is a line between guiding and protecting her as a mom and in creating an atmosphere of fear and anxiety for her to grow up under.

I have to constantly keep myself in check when it comes to fear and the way that I mother.

Am I planting unhealthy fear in my daughter's mind and heart? 
Am I raising my daughter to run courageously toward Jesus or am I raising her to fear a mean God's harsh hand and fear what man can do to us.  

I want my daughter to climb trees and love big and take the Gospel to the ends of the earth or to the end of her street...whatever God has for her. All those things require a certain level of fearlessness. I get to plant the seeds of courage or the seeds of fear in her heart starting from her earliest days. I'm learning, by His grace alone, how to recognize my own fears and hand them to God and not my daughter. 

Tomorrow: Day 16: Raising Fearless Children (Part 2)