Dear fear of the unknown,

I’ve put your name in lowercase to foreshadow how small of an impact you’ll have on my life. I’m sure you’ve frightened many a perfectionist and inferiority-complex ridden individuals in your time, and this has included me. I’m sure you’d love the assurance of my going down memory lane and telling you how I’ve feared you since I was a little girl–how you began as a fear of darkness and later resembled something like a terror of failure, to now, when the future shouts at me from an unknown expanse and I can’t see what’s in front of me. Now, how I’m reminded of my childhood self again, how I recognize that familiar feeling creeping up inside of me.

I thought you should know my company let me go recently. After receiving a near perfect evaluation on my performance review for the seventh year in a row, my boss told me my position was being eliminated. He slid the review across his desk and said it was mine to keep after giving me the news in the most sincere way he could. Even though he told me it wasn’t my fault, there wasn’t a way around the difficulty of that conversation and the feeling of being phased out.

I thought you should know you haunted me that first week after receiving the news and recurrently after, as I’m hurled into the deep end of an unknown ocean. I find myself scared of the future, this fear taking the shape of a broken job market full of horror stories from others seeking employment. Not being able to see what’s on the other side of this door frightens me.

They’ve said to keep in mind I’m not the only one going through these kinds of things. They’ve said to remember that there are others experiencing just as bad, if not much worse. But what good does that do me when I’m alone in my room at night trying to fall asleep to the soundtrack of my life? What good does that do me when I’m sitting by myself in the spare bedroom of my home in the light of a blazing afternoon, as the day quickly shifts and the sun disappearing from the sky tells me I’ve run out of time. I should pack up and try again tomorrow.

But then I look out at the birds soaring in the soft blue sky, hovering around the sunlight. I see them gliding on the wind with their wings outspread as far as they can go, and, deeper than all of the fear and worry and anxiety, I have an even deeper feeling that I’m going to be okay. I’ve got a weight that’s more like an anchor inside me, never weighing me down, but in the midst of my most untamable emotions, holds me steady. And if moving steadily forward means first being grounded and stable, what I’m tethered to–or who–keeps me in His hands, holding the universe and my world in His nail-torn palms.

Where He is, is where I’m supposed to be, and I think I’m going to be okay.

Because maybe, just maybe, what waits on the other side of this door isn’t terror or fright, but wonder. Could it be that this fog hides something more breathtaking than I could ever think of? That someday soon I’ll discover it is little more than the cloak that covers the beautiful unknown before it’s revealed in all its glory?

The truth is, I know the ending of this story. Because it’s already written.

And if I stop for a moment and look around, I can see there is someone else beside me in this furnace, the same One who halts the stormy seas with His voice, who, when He calls out to the wind and waves and tells them to be still, they must cease. The One the fiercest storm bows to, even the storm of my own emotions.

His name is Jesus, and He’s already won this victory for me. All that’s left to do is walk forward and meet it in the future.

Sincerely and never yours,

( 90% style score)