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Facing Our Fears
February 24, 2008

I think it is fair to say that most people who know me professionally see a confident, self assured person who knows what she wants and goes for it. During my training for ministry, I learned how to be a “nonanxious presence” so that I could stay calm for people who are in crisis. People often compliment me for being brave enough to stand up to the religious right, to break the silence about sexuality issues that others find hard to talk about, and to take on people like Bill O’Reilly and Phyllis Schlafley. And, in the professional world I live in, they are mostly right.   

But today, in a way, I’m going to come out – like at least some of you, I have struggled with fears and anxiety throughout my life. I have often thought about preaching about this topic, but the time didn’t seem right, until my experience this summer. But more about that in a little while.

Anxiety, like its first cousin depression, can take many forms. The DSM, the diagnostic manual and Bible of mental health providers, lists 12 different forms of anxiety disorders that are disorders. They include social anxiety, generalized anxiety, specific phobia disorder, panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. All of these disorders are now known to have origins in brain chemistry imbalances, and they affect about 30 million Americans each year.

But, we don’t have to have a diagnosable disease to relate to living with fears and worries.  One of you, upon learning of the topic for this sermon, said to me, “I’m glad you are going to talk about this. I seem to worry all the time: about little things, like did I leave the stove on, to big things like whether there is going to be another 9/11.” Surely the events of September 11^th made the world more frightening for many of us. The unthinkable had happened, and that means it could happen again. I recently was at an event in Detroit on the 72^nd floor of a skyscraper; every one of us from the New York area remarked that we were slightly uncomfortable being there. 

I think the world has also become more frightening for most of us because of our 24 hour/7 day a week news cycle. For example, in researching my new book, “What Every 21^st Century Parent Needs to Know”, I learned that childhood abductions and child sexual abuse from non family members are both down compared to when I was a child, but parents today think they are higher and worry more about them. The difference is because of unending news coverage and Amber Alerts: when a child is kidnapped in a small town across the United States, we know within minutes. There are dozens of books about stranger danger for children, but only a handful that address the fact that children know 90% of their abusers well. And these parental fears may actually be hurting our children – not only may we be instilling messages that the world is not safe and to be trusted, but many parents are no longer allowing their children to walk or bike to school or even play outdoors unsupervised. Only 8% of children play outdoors each day and the average child in America spends just 18 minutes a week playing outdoors.  Compare that to your own childhood and youth, where 90% of us walked or rode a bike to school and most of us remember long days away from the house playing unsupervised.

Now, I am not saying we don’t need to protect our children, but we need to give them skills not our anxieties. It is true that there is much in the world that warrants our worries – just this week, if you saw the news, you might have found yourself worrying about Pakistan, Iraq, Serbia, tainted meat in school lunchrooms, that this year’s flu shot isn’t preventing this year’s flus, and that was just this week …Our fears are manipulated by changes in the threat level, advertising, the news, and politicians. The upcoming Presidential election may very well be a battle between playing on our fears and inspiring us to hope. In my daily work, I know that those who fight sexual justice the most vehemently are motivated by their fears of the other, and their fears of their own sexuality. 

And then there are the internal fears almost all of us face – of aging, of not being good enough, of disease, of not being loveable or capable enough, of letting those we love down…our own very personal and not often spoken about fears that keep us up at night. 

It is fair to say that I have struggled with fear since I was a child. My parents were fearful –the 1930’s and 1940’s world of their childhood was a dangerous place for Jews, and indeed, my father’s mother was only one of two in her family to leave Poland before the Holocaust claimed their lives. My father’s father died at 51, before I was born, and my dad had an often verbalized fear of premature mortality that I was aware of even as a small child.  My mother saw the physical world as dangerous: she admonished early and frequently “don’t do that you’ll hurt yourself.”  Go outside barefoot? We were told that we’d cut our feet to shreds.  Go outside with wet hair? We’d catch pneumonia. A headache could be a brain tumor, a sore neck was meningitis. Add to that that I was fairly accident prone as a small child, often more in my own world than aware of what was going on around me, and I didn’t have a chance.

My life long struggle with anxiety has been my teacher. I had to learn that I was not perfect, that I was vulnerable, not always in control…and that I needed to monitor my stress and alleviate it. For the past 25 years I have actively taken steps every day to control anxiety – I don’t drink caffeine, I only eat minimal amounts of sugar, I try to exercise 5 times a week, I meditate, get periodic massages, meet with a spiritual director, and go in and out of therapy whenever I am in transition or periods of stress. My husband says that I am very high maintenance!

But, I have also learned to see my minor anxiety symptoms as my old friend. When I experience tingling toes or fingers, I know that they are a barometer that I am off balance in some way that I need to step back and evaluate what is going on in my life. I have also had to learn, again and again, that when I acknowledge the feelings, and pay attention to them I do better than when I become anxious about being anxious. Paradoxically, I have learned that the best way to handle my anxiety feelings is to relax into them.

And so far, all of that has worked for me. I pledged to myself as a young adult that I would never let fear stop me from something I really wanted to do – I would fly because I love to travel and because it’s necessary for my work, I would conquer my fear of driving for the same reason, I would speak out because I had to.

But, I hung on to one fear. Now, most of us are fearful of something. The most common phobia is public speaking – fortunately not one of my issues given how important it is to my profession, but many people find the thought of giving a presentation or a speech paralyzing. The second most common phobia is fear of flying, which I have struggled with on and off since my children were born, a fear that I have now gotten down to just a few minutes at take off and during bad turbulence. There are literally thousands of phobias that people can have; the phobia index I found online begins at ablutophobia, fear of bathing, and ends with zoophobia, fear of animals, with everything from fear of garlic, fear of the wind, and fear of sex in between. And although they may seem incomprehensible to those of you who have no such fears, these fears cause untold distress who struggle with them. They may not be “real” threats, but the feelings they inspire certainly are.

I have had a lifelong fear of falling down an escalator. I trace it to an accident I had when I was three, when I lost my balance and tumbled down a flight of stairs, waking up in a strange hospital bed alone with a concussion. Descending moving stairs scare me – standing at the top of an escalator I feel flooded with my three year old feelings. And so when I became an adult, I just stopped using them. Thank goodness for the Americans with Disabilities Act, since there are now elevators for the handicapped in airports, shopping malls, and subways. And there is no question that my fear of down escalators is a handicap even if it’s invisible.  For years I went to great lengths to hide my fear, often for example, telling people who are meeting me at airports that I will meet them at ground level so I can find the alternative elevator on my own. I know where all the elevators are at every mall, airport, and I’ve taken more service elevators at hotels than most people. 

But last spring, something happened that made me decide it was time to let it go. Rev. Forrest Church from All Soul’s in New York spoke at the district minister’s meeting about facing his probable death from esophageal cancer, and when I asked him how he had handled the fear, he said that he wasn’t afraid.  I was rapt.  I couldn’t imagine not being paralyzed with fear in that situation. I made a decision on the spot, and later shared it with some of the minister’s: this may sound flip in a way that I don’t mean, but I had a strong revelation that night: if Forrest could face his premature death without paralyzing fear, surely I could do something about mine. I understood it as preparation for the much bigger fears that were sure to come as I get older. 

That was March. In June, I finally gathered my courage to call a phobia specialist, a sister of a good friend, who I knew lived in Weston. I had told enough people that I was going to do this, and I knew by going public, I needed to at least try. We made an appointment. The first time we talked at her office. The second time, she had me meet her at the Stamford Lord and Taylors. We rode up escalators until I could do it without hesitation, we watched down escalators, talked about how they worked, looked at how people rode them…and I stood at the top frozen and unable to move. I literally could not take the first step. Nothing she suggested seemed to work – counting backwards, girls names in alphabetical order, breathing lavender, breath strips, talking – nothing enabled me to step on the down escalator. I left the store feeling exhausted and defeated – but with a time for a third appointment.

And I might not have gone except for that public commitment to this group of ministers and my friends. And on the way to the store, I told myself that if I couldn’t do it this time, it was okay, not really important anyway, and well, I had tried….and maybe there was a sermon in here somewhere.

We started at the top of the smallest down escalator. I practiced breathing, visualizing…a two year old boy came flying down the escalator in front of me, resisting his mom’s effort to take his hand.  A handyman came down holding on to a 12 foot step ladder.  Old people who could barely walk stepped on without hesitation.  Women in stilettos.  I wasn’t worried about a single one of them falling.  Just that I would.

And finally the therapist asked me to do something that she said she never did …which was to imagine the very worst thing that could happen if I stepped on the down escalator. I said I would fall. And she said, then what would be the worst? And I said, I’d break a leg or get a concussion. And then said and then what? And I said I’d end up at the hospital…and she said, with managed care, probably not longer than two days….she asked me if I thought I could die, and I didn’t, and reminded me that we hadn’t seen another person fall yet…

And so I approached the escalator…the worst that could happen was that I would ruin my weekend…it was worth the chance…I put out my foot, pulled it back, put out my foot, pulled it back…put out my foot, stepped on…and rode calmly to the bottom…where I promptly burst into tears. We spent the next 45 minutes riding every down escalator in that store.

I wish I could tell you that my fear is over. Not so…I still can’t do it in high heels carrying a suitcase at an airport…but I have gotten on down escalators in hotels and malls and in the subway…not without pausing, testing, but as I make myself do it and each time, my fear gets a little less.

The amazing thing is that I now find myself less fearful in other parts of my life as well. Plane rides are easier…driving over bridges is easier…facing a health scare a few months ago felt easier…it’s as if by addressing escalators, I have let go of some of the fear that inhabits me. 

Ultimately, I think facing our own fears is a central spiritual issue. The expression “fear not” appears many times in Scripture. God tells Abraham, Sarah, and Jacob to “fear not” after he has asked them to change their lives in some unimaginable leap into the unknown. Moses, Samuel, David, and Jesus teach ell their followers “fear not.” AA teaches people to “let go, let God.”  For those who believe in an interventionist God, turning worries and anxieties over to that God is both comforting and helpful. 

For those of us who don’t, I still think our spiritual beliefs can help us learn to live with our anxieties and fears.  I am very fond of this verse from Matthew 6: 25 34 in the Sermon on the Mount printed on the front of the order of service:

Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear...Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life…So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.  Today’s trouble is enough for today. 

The Matthew text is a reminder that it’s about living in the present moment, because that is all we ever have. One of the spiritual books that I reread on a regular basis is Thich Nhat Hanh’s lovely “Peace is Every Step.” He teaches a simple lesson that we are to do through out the day. Do it with me. Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know this is a wonderful moment. When we are faced with a disturbing emotion like fear, anxiety, anger, jealousy and so on, we can modify it. Breathing in, I know the fear is here. Breathing out, I know the fear will leave me. Breathing in, I know the fear is unpleasant.  Breathing out, I know it will pass. Breathing in, I am calm. Breathing out, I am at peace. 

Focusing on the present moment allows us to face our fears. Thich Nhat Hanh says we should stop asking ourselves “what is wrong” and instead calls us to ask “what is right?” It’s about being grateful for all that is good, even in times of stress and worry. It’s about not worrying about one’s premature death, but as Forrest Church told his congregants just a few weeks ago upon learning that his life would now be measured in months not years, it’s about celebrating the miracle that we are alive at all and the love that graces our lives. It’s about creating the best life possible, without the limitations of self doubt or low self esteem or the inner critic, warning that you might get hurt. It’s about believing that our life is unfolding the way it is meant to, and that we have the internal strengths and the external supports to face whatever life throws at us. It’s about trusting ourselves and trusting others around us. It’s about being willing to share our vulnerabilities and to ask for help when we need it. 

It’s about believing that things will get better even when they seem the most dark. During a particularly difficult period in my life, someone shared with me these words:  “Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.” And that resurrection did come…as it has when I have faced other seemingly impossible challenges. 

Like that day at Lord and Taylor’s, it’s about taking the first step. Reaching out to a friend.  Calling a therapist and making an appointment. Opening the want ads again. Going back on match.com. Going to that first exercise class or taking a walk. Telling someone you love them.  Remembering to breathe. Reaching out to someone who is struggling. Forgiving a friend.  Calling someone you miss who you haven’t talked to in a long time. Meeting someone new today at coffee hour. Signing up for an Odyssey class or joining a committee. Facing a fear, trying something new, trying something risky. Take a first step today.

This may be the hardest sermon I’ve ever given. Breathing in, I calm my body. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment, I know – I KNOW – that this is a wonderful moment. 

And so may it be.   

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