I walked to the coffee shop tonight, trudging through puddles and thoughts the whole way there. I am determined to make something happen in my soul these days. I am determined to find a course and stay on it. I find that the options are huge and full and there was once a time I didn't fear writing them out here, in this place. I stop on the corner of Walnut and Market, stick my hands deep in the pockets of my fleece and wonder where that time went?

She was a more fearless, determined, free and certain person than she is today, on the corner of Walnut and Market. She had plenty of friends, joy, deep contentment, and passion. Dreams enough to satiate five persons. She packed away everything and moved to Guatemala. She traveled to Asia a few times. She worked at wilderness camps, managing ropes courses despite a fear of heights. She transferred to a southern university sight unseen, she wrote everyday, she painted, she worshiped, she fell in love, she grew up. And then she grew fearful. Or maybe she was fearful all along and when all the stuff stopped the fear poked through. She doesn't know anymore.

And then I walked the rest of the way to the coffee shop, which was closed, so I turned around and went home.

It would be easy to say that the cares of the world coddle those fears, that a life unhindered by bills and jobs and debts and furniture is a fearless life. From this vantage point it seems that would be the truest thing. But I know people who own little, carry little, and fear much. So I cannot think that it is stuff that cultivates the fear, but I think that I John was onto something when he talked about the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life. I think that there must be something to those wicked three, something that lends an ultimate fear in a person.

I make a strategy while I walk, ways to alleviate my cell phone, snowball my school debt, lessen the cares of the world so that there is nothing to boast about in life--what is there after all? But even these strategies feel limp and fearful (who says that should the giant be ten inches smaller, he should look like less of a giant to a dwarf?).

Tonight I edit an article I wrote last year and never submitted. Maybe tomorrow I will submit it. Not to get published, no, but to say to fear that I am afraid of much, but I am not afraid of fear. Not tonight.