Today is the day!

Today is the day I make my choice. I get to choose, and I choose not to live by fear.

I have an anxiety disorder. I have worked really hard to overcome it, to not let it rule my life. I have come far. I used to have so many anxiety attacks that I could hardly go anywhere or do anything without panicking and starting to hyperventilate. I have to say the singles ward helped me immensely. I wanted to have friends and do fun stuff with them so I had to get over it. And can you just see me on a first date with a really cute guy and I start to panic and he doesn't know what to do? A second dates not happening, right? It took a lot of work, but I got to the point where people thought I was just shy. Shy I could deal with and so could other people.

The thing about having a panic attack in public was that I was so embarrassed I just wanted to crawl in a hole and hide forever, but I think it scares other people more then it scares me. It has probably been years since I have had a full blown anxiety attack, but I had one last night. I wont say what caused it, I'm not even sure I really know. What I do know is the stupidest reason in the world. We had a friend over, we were playing games, and again I just wanted to crawl in a hole and hide forever.

I know that Satan has tools that he uses to try and control us. He uses fear against me, it is one of my greatest weaknesses. But today I choose not to let him use fear against me any more. "Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgment that something is more important than fear." I know I will always feel fear, I will always feel afraid, I have come to deal with that fact. But I also realize that there are things more important then fear. I choose to see what is more important and focus on that. We get what we focus on consistently.

Today I choose to live by faith, not fear.