FROM FEAR TO FREEDOM
For most of my life, my relationship with God was built on fear.
Fear of messing up.
Fear of not believing the right things.
Fear that one wrong move would somehow put me on the “outs” with God.
I thought my obedience was love, but looking back, it was anxiety dressed up as holiness.
When I began deconstructing my faith, I didn’t just lose a belief system, I lost my safety, my certainty, my community and my comfort. Or at least, that’s what it felt like. Every prayer, every “quiet time,” every rule I followed, every church service I attended, every time I told someone about Jesus…it had all been an attempt to prove to God that I was worthy. Without that checklist, who was I?
I’ve seen my journal entries from that season. Entries that bemoan how worthless I am without Jesus. Or that I don’t deserve anything because I’m such a sinner. Or that perhaps I didn’t do quite enough, or preach the right message, or that I was so blessed to even be used as a vessel by God because I’m so flawed. There was so much self-loathing. Again, dressed up as holiness. The only relief I felt was that I was taught (and believed) when God looked at me, He didn’t actually see me, but he saw Jesus covering me. Whew! What a relief. If He saw me, He’d be disgusted.
Looking back now, my heart breaks for that version of me. She was so desperate for love that she was willing to erase herself to get it. She thought disappearing was the path to holiness, when in reality, it was the path to losing her own soul. I want to reach back through time, hold her face in my hands, and tell her, “You are already worthy. You are already enough. You don’t need to hide behind anyone, not even Jesus, for God to see the beauty in you.”
The shift didn’t happen overnight, of course. Slowly, I started questioning the voices that told me I was nothing. I started wondering if maybe, just maybe, God wasn’t disgusted with me at all. Maybe God actually liked me. Maybe I didn’t need to earn God’s love and approval…maybe I already had it. What if I always did?
Freedom began the moment I stopped trying to prove my worth and started living as if I already had it. That meant setting down the heaviness of shame I’d been dragging around for decades. It meant allowing myself to laugh without guilt, to rest without feeling lazy, to trust that love doesn’t have conditions attached. The fear that had been my constant companion started to loosen its grip, and in its place, I felt something I’d never truly known before: peace. What I didn’t expect was that in the middle of all my striving, I would find something better than certainty. I found freedom.
Freedom to show up as my full, messy self without fear of rejection.
Freedom to be curious, to question, to explore without worrying that God was keeping score. Freedom to believe that real love doesn’t require you to earn it.
It turns out that God was never waiting for me to perform. God was waiting for me to breathe, to trust and to fall into His already open arms without fear.
If you’re in that place where the fear still grips you, I want you to know: there’s life beyond it. The bridge from fear to freedom isn’t built in a day. It’s built one brave step at a time.
You don’t have to have all the answers.
You don’t have to check all the boxes.
You just have to trust and keep walking toward the love that has been chasing you all along.
