Jamie C. Finn’s heart and compassion shine through everything she does. When she began her journey as a foster parent, she had no idea of the ways her emotions, sanity, and faith would be stretched, but she found comfort in the unchanging, unending grace and love only our Heavenly Father can provide. It’s a grace to welcome Jamie to the farm’s table today…

Guest Post by Jamie C. Finn

I am a sleep training expert. Not literally, but I’ve done it, successfully, more than twenty times. I wrote an article on it that went viral. I’m the mom that mom friends tell their other mom friends to talk to about their child’s sleep issues. So, by my calculations, I’m pretty much a sleep training expert.

And then, Mikey.

Mikey was the hardest baby I’d ever cared for. Addiction and instability and trauma had marked all three months of his little life. He didn’t care that I was the expert. He and his complex trifecta of scared, sick, and sad had no respect for my self-proclaimed sleep-training-expert status. He was going to take three hours of rocking, feeding, crying, shushing, patting, and praying, “Dear God, please just make this child go to sleep,” each and every night to fall asleep.

I was, uncharacteristically, more than willing to participate in this nightly three-hour event. I loved this little boy deeply. His smile, his cry, the way he only ever wanted me. And my heart broke for this little boy. His confusion, his suffering, the hardness of his short life. If he needed me to rock him, I would. If the only place he could feel safe was in my arms, then he’d stay in my arms the whole night through.

I had seen him with his mom only once before. She was low-grade high—nodding off on her daily dose of methadone—and had no idea how to hold, let alone comfort, a small baby. At one point, she nearly dropped him. I grabbed his small body and swallowed the large lump in my throat. The hour spent with the two of them together seared fear in my heart for the reunification that would surely one day come.

“I know what it is to be afraid for a child. But I also know what it is to not stay afraid, to not live afraid, to not be controlled by the afraidness. And isn’t that almost the same as being unafraid?“

And then that day came. The order was made. He was headed home.

The night before he left, I rocked him in my arms. He was fed. He was changed. He was tired. And he was screaming. And while I kissed his curls and prayed he’d calm down, the thought flashed in my mind: She’s going to shake him. She’s going to smother him. She’s going to kill him. He is going to die by her hands.

That thought was from the pit of hell and from the realest part of my brain. I told my mind to shut up. But it behaved like my semi-obedient child, who, when I demand silence, chooses to whisper.

I was afraid. Mikey went home. My disobedient brain kept a-whisperin’. 

I know what it is to be afraid for a child. But I also know what it is to not stay afraid, to not live afraid, to not be controlled by the afraidness. And isn’t that almost the same as being unafraid?

The Bible is full of the frightening. Although it has been accused of being a boring book, it is anything but. Real-life heroes, great kings, brave women and children, just plain nobodies throughout, all face-to-face with the fear-inducing.

We’d like to believe following God means the absence of danger, that a loving God would never call His children into scary things. But read the Bible, and it’s impossible to go on believing this.

“God regularly calls His people into the scary.”

God regularly calls His people into the scary.

You know, scary like climbing a mountain to tie up and then spill the blood of your one-hundred-years-in-the-making, one and only son (Genesis 22). Like devoting your life to building a boat in the middle of the desert and accepting that all the animals of the world will just show up (Genesis 6). Like being married to a man who passes you off as his sister and hands you to another man (Genesis 20). Like approaching the city walls of a vicious enemy with the battle plan of some trumpets and a brisk walk (Joshua 6). Like fighting a nine-foot thug with a few pebbles (1 Samuel 17). Like having a sleepover with some lions (Daniel 6). Like being told by an angel—when you’re an unmarried fourteen-year-old—that you will be pregnant with God’s Son (Luke 1). Like watching the guy you thought was God incarnate be killed on a cross with criminals and buried dead in a cave (Mark 15).

Scary.

And there, sprinkled throughout the truly terrifying, is God’s command: “Fear not.”

God—or someone on His behalf—says it more than three hundred times in His Book. The simple two-word command “Fear not” may feel discouragingly overly simple. If it were as simple as “fearing not,” then we would all just . . . not fear. 

“The call to “fear not” isn’t a command to just do better and be stronger. It’s really not even a command at all. It’s a promise, a reminder, a hold-on-tight-to-it truth.”

But, there attached to every command to not be afraid, is something else along with it. Some important truth, beautiful promise, or big-picture reality of God’s character.

“Fear not . . . I am your shield.” (Gen. 15:1)

“Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you.” (Gen. 26:24)

“Fear not, I am the one who helps you.” (Isa. 41:13)

It’s not just that I shouldn’t be afraid. It’s that I don’t have to be afraid.

The call to “fear not” isn’t a command to just do better and be stronger. It’s really not even a command at all. It’s a promise, a reminder, a hold-on-tight-to-it truth.

I don’t have to be afraid. Because God.

[ Our humble thanks to Baker Books for their partnership in today’s devotion. ]