My Biggest Fears

Something that I've always struggled with is fear.

I'm not exactly sure why I struggle with it, and I've tried to overcome it many, many times throughout my life. I've even grown to take the word 'fearless' as my life motto. Because I want to live a fearless life.

But today, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about my biggest fears, and why I have them. They're personal and real, and it is something that I don't usually talk about.

I think it's good to talk about them, though. Because if you talk about it enough, maybe it'll become less scary. Maybe it'll become less of a threat. Here are my top 5 fears:

1. Tornadoes. This one is sort of silly and I'm not exactly sure when I became afraid of it. I remember when I was little sitting in our living room watching the news as a tornado was headed right towards our house and being petrified. Ever since then it's been bad. When there's a thunder stormy that's the first thing my mind goes to. It's even worse now, since the house we're living in doesn't have a basement. I just hate them and never want to have to experience one. Ugh.
2. Getting in a plane crash. Also irrational. I know. I've just always been afraid of this. Again, maybe it was from watching the 9/11 stuff happen on the news when I was 5. I'm not sure. I just know that whenever I get on a plane, I'm nervous.
3. Never falling in love. My dream in life has always been to fall in love, get married, have kids. So my absolute biggest fear is that it'll never happen. I know that I have to trust God with it, and I have been trying my best to, but it still terrifies me. 
4. Letting my parents down. The idea of letting anyone down is horrible to me, so letting my parents down would devastate me completely. They've done so much for me throughout my life that I can't even imagine doing something that would really hurt them. 
5. Never getting my dream job. The idea of never being able to be a stay at home mom and write books scares me. I don't want any other jobs than this. I don't know if I was cut out for anything else, so the prospect of not doing that scares me a lot. 

So, yeah. Some of those are probably pretty silly, but they really do freak me out a lot. I just hope that one day I can defeat the power that fear holds over me and laugh in its face. 

I really, really, really hate fear. 

xoxo, shi

ps. what are your biggest fears? let me know in the comments.

I Found My Purpose In Jesus

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We all have had those times in life when we've felt absolutely worthless.
Scared, broken, alone, and tired.

I know that I have. Plenty of times. 

But I have found my purpose. In Jesus.

I lost my way earlier this year. It started around December, probably.
It was when I first realized how broken I truly was. There were scars from my past that kept coming back to haunt me and nothing that I was doing at the time felt good enough. Not for anyone; my parents, my friends, my teachers, not even God. It felt like I was slipping into this dark hole and that there was nobody who would be able to bring me out of it, because it just felt so hopeless.

I guess you could say that I stopped participating in life. I would go to school and hardly talk to anyone and come home and hardly talk to anyone. I was sad and breaking and I felt like no one saw that. I felt like no one could see the way my heart was shattering, or the way that I struggled to breathe sometimes. And that only made it hurt worse. It hurt that no one seemed to care enough to see through the walls that I'd built up. It hurt that no one just came up to me and said "hey, Shiloh. I know you're not okay. What's going on?" I just wanted someone to understand, to see how hard I was trying to make it through. But nobody was doing that.

I didn't start to feel better until this month, not really anyway. I'm good at pretending now, to be honest. But then Jesus got my heart again. He got my attention. I was at Winter Jam in Lexington, and Tenth Avenue North was doing their set; singing their song "The Struggle" and these were the words I was hearing:

there's a wreckage, there's a fire
there's a weakness in my love
there's a hunger i can't control
Lord, i falter and i fall down
and i hold on to the chains you broke 
when you came and saved my soul
...
hallelujah we are free to struggle
we're not struggling to be free
your blood bought and it makes us children
children drop your chains and sing
...
hallelujah death is overcome
and we are breathing
hallelujah our stone hearts become
flesh that's beating
hallelujah chains have been undone
and we are singing
hallelujah the fire has begun

And it was during that song that I just felt Jesus telling me that he's been there. He was there the entire time, even though I didn't realize it. He was there when I was in my room crying until three a.m. He was there when people made off-handed comments that stung more than they should have. He was there when I didn't want to wake up, and when I even thought about giving into the temptation to hurt myself. He was there through all of it; the good days and the bad ones and He continues to just be there.

He was the person I was looking for; the one who said: "Shiloh, I know your not okay. I know that you're hurting. I'm here for you and I love you." And I can't tell you how much that alone healed my heart. He's taking the broken pieces of my life and constructing them back together in a way that has started to change me. And I'm not so afraid anymore. His perfect love is casting out my fear. The fear that I had constantly had for the past few months.

I have a purpose. I'm not too far broken. I can be fixed and I am being fixed.
Because of Jesus.
I found myself there,
in the arms of a savior who wants nothing more than to love me.
In the arms of a savior who gave up his life for me.
To save me from myself.
I found my purpose in Jesus.
And I'm getting better and better every day.

xx, Shiloh.

We Are the Fearless Ones

fearless (Adj.): showing a lack of fear; intrepid.

Fearless is a word that I have been thinking about for a really long time now. It's a word that I have sort of taken on as my life motto; I want to live fearlessly. It took me a long time to figure out what it actually meant, though. To me, fearless doesn't mean "having no fear," it means that I have fears, but I'm going to face them. I truly believe that since I realized that I have not only been living more fearlessly, but I've also been happier.

I started to try new things. They were things that I thought scared me, and sometimes still do scare me. I started facing my fears by riding a roller coaster (silly, I know) and I ended up loving it. After I did that facing my fears became sort of a spiral effect and I started trying things that absolutely scare me to death. But I did them. And honestly, the feeling that I get after trying something that scares me is the best feeling in the world. It's like a rush of adrenaline is coursing through my veins and it's just exciting.

I want to challenge you all to do one thing that scares you this week. Whatever it may be, and however silly it may seem. Just give it a shot. Let me know how you feel afterwards, because to me there is honestly no way to describe that feeling.