are you afraid of the dark?

I never thought I had huge issues with fear. I'm not scared of rodents, or things that creep on the ground, or the dark, or getting lost, or people I don't know, or heights, or small tight spaces, or big crowded spaces. What I'm finally realizing though is that while I may not fear all of those tangible things. I definitely fear intangible things. Well one intangible thing. I fear losing people in my life that I care about. Not in a morbid "they just got hit my a bus" sense, but in an "oh they don't like me or need me or want to know me anymore" sense. I was talking about this with one of my friends today and she mentioned that it makes sense that my greatest fear would be tied to my greatest gift--loving on people. 

I guess it makes sense. Satan isn't going to waste time attacking me in something that I already suck at or just don't even care about. Instead he's going to sucker punch me by telling me I'm not a good friend, by convincing me I'm selfish, and by making me feel like all of my relationships are either about to fall apart or already failing. It's startlingly easy to get caught up in these irrational, silly traps. And the only way I can defeat this fear is to surrender it to the Lord over and over again, sometimes once a day, sometimes once a minute. The times when I don't surrender my fear of losing people I care about (or maybe a better way to phrase it is being left by the people I care about?), it starts to consume me. For an instant, it even makes me wish I loved the people I love less so that it wouldn't hurt so much when they pull away. It makes me wish for less of one of the greatest gifts God has equipped me with. Kind of astounding. Got me to thinking that must be something akin to what God feels when his children push him away, how much it grieves him when we're disobedient or focused on anything apart from Christ. 

Anyway, no huge revelations here. Just a good verse to tie it all together...

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." I John 4:18.