Free at last!

I am the youngest of eight children. My parents had a yours, mine and ours family created. My mother was a stay at home mom and my dad worked away from home most of the time to try and feed his big crew at home. I remember playing lots of different games with my siblings. When our parents would go on their date nights the games were on! Our most, or should I say their most (my siblings), favorite game to play was "hide and go seek in the dark". I put emphasis on the word "dark". I was possibly the biggest chicken on the planet. I was scared of anything including my own shadow. NO JOKING! When we would play "hide and go seek in the dark" I was always the one hiding under the kitchen table with the family dog to protect me from whatever I thought was going to get me. Did I mention that I would also be sobbing in fear? And my poor older sister, I don't think she ever got to sleep in her twin bed without me. I would start out in my own bed, but as soon as the lights went out, I would beg her to sleep in hers. This probably lasted until I was out of the house and actually already engaged to my husband. I'm not sure what I was so scared of. I just had this overwhelming fear about me. Once I was in my twenties and really started to walk closely to God than I ever had, one day I realized that I wasn't scared anymore. The fear was gone. It just went away without me noticing. Maybe it was motherhood that had occupied my time and I just never realized that my fear was slowly leaving. Now as a woman in my thirties I realize that it was the closeness that I had with God. He replaced my fear with HIS peace. HIS love surpassed all the fear that I had. When I walked in the shadow of HIS presence there was nothing left to fear. God saved me from a life of fear. Although I still do not watch horror films, I can say that I do sleep alone and a game of "hide and go seek in the dark" with my, now adult siblings, sounds like a fun thing to do. It's a wonderful feeling to know where fear used to control me, God has set me free! God's love is fear free! 1 John "There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear,"