Stronger than the Struggle by Havilah Cunnington

Author:Havilah Cunnington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2017-11-20T05:00:00+00:00

Strategy

Years ago one of our sons had a debilitating fear. Every night as we would get ready to bathe him, he would scream in horror as we attempted to wash his hair. His fear was so dominant it would monopolize the entire experience. We were at a complete loss. What should have been his favorite time of the day turned into a tangled mess with screaming, wrestling, and frustration.

Exhausted, Ben and I avoided bath time every night until one of us could muster the courage to take on the task. Any parent reading this understands how helpless you can feel. Kids are irrational, so it’s impossible to talk them out of fear.

One night, as Ben and I sat in our bedroom, we looked at each other. “We’ve got to get a plan. We need to help him.”

Our son needed a remedy. We understood that if we allowed fear to overcome him, he could battle it for the rest of his life. He needed a game plan. And quite honestly, Ben and I also needed to stop bowing down to this fear and letting it dominate our entire family. It was time to stop living on the defense and get back on the offense.

We walked into our son’s room and explained our strategy. “The next time we wash your hair, we want you to say out loud, ‘I will not fear!’” We assured him he had permission to say this phrase as many times as he needed. We were commissioning him to use as much force as necessary. We didn’t care if he needed to scream or cry; we just wanted him to say it out loud while we washed his hair.

The next day we geared up for bath time, explaining our plan to him again. As we began to shampoo his hair, our son began to scream. We looked at him and said, “Now you can say, ‘I will not fear! I will not fear! I will not fear!’”

His little voice started to repeat after us, but it wasn’t consistent. “I will not fear (insert terrifying scream). I will not fear.”

Ben and I looked at each other as if to say, We have no idea if this is working, but let’s keep going.

Then he began to say the phrase more solidly. “I will not fear . . . I will not fear!” His hysteria turned into a battle cry. He continued this, night after night, as we bathed him. It didn’t take long for the scenario to do a complete turnaround. He was finally free from fear. After that, he never feared washing his hair again.

Like my son, we need a game plan for fear. We need to stop explaining our worry and anxiety away, living as if fear will always be a part of our lives. Paul introduces this promise to Timothy and to each of us: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Tim.

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