My whole life I’d been afraid. I didn’t look afraid. I played the role of the brave one quite well. However, afraid was exactly what I was. Every single choice I ever made, I made with the utmost caution. Even the brave things I’d do were rooted in fear of a different consequence. I overthought every single situation. The overthinking could happen in a matter of moments, but sometimes I’d dwell on a decision for days. It kept me awake at night and it became a form of obsession.

Sometimes, I’d be put in a situation where I’d have to make a choice that concerned my personal welfare. Sometimes it was about a boy, sometimes just a group of friends, my family, but it was always about people. When it came to salvaging my relationships, I’d choose to get burned because I knew it would hurt, but that it would fade quickly. I honestly didn’t realize I was just willingly collecting unnecessary scars.

It was as if I NEEDED to be loved, but I had to be someone else… I couldn’t be Melissa. My fear wasn’t just that something bad could happen to me, it was that everyone would hate me. It turned me into this silent rock, afraid to move; afraid to be alone. I was afraid to be needy; afraid to be wrong. My heart would cringe at the thought of losing someone based on a choice I made. So… I was quiet and careful; cautious about everything.

But… I was also blind. From my point of view, I was treating life like a math problem. I was weighing outcomes that hadn’t even presented themselves as possibilities. I was calculating what could be the worst to happen, the best to happen, and everything in between. Oblivious to how tortured I was, I thought I knew everything and I literally knew nothing.

My entire life I’ve been afraid of falling. Not afraid of heights, but just falling, literally. Ice skating, rollerblading, riding a bike, roller-coasters, etc… I was afraid of getting hurt and addicted to feeling good. So, I’d be calculated, decided, and I’d take my time. The good side effect of this psychological issue? I never broke a bone… I guess.

In the ice skating rink, I’d go along the edge of the rink for a while, slowly edge out, get comfortable and I’d gradually get better. I’d never go too fast, never attempt a trick, never try anything else… but I’d also never fall. It was safety. Until, one day, my little brother thought it was funny to try to scare me. He ran right into me and I fell, HARD. Nothing was broken, but my safety was compromised by a variable I didn’t expect.

This introduced a flurry of emotions, and it wasn’t the only time. These are just physically falling examples, but falling meant a lot more than the literal gravity pull to the ground. I was afraid of falling for people, yet I did it anyway. I was afraid of falling into traps, falling for lies, and falling in life. I was so obsessive over trying to consider every single angle I could wrap my mind around before making a decision, I lost time, friends, and opportunities.

Instead of taking risks, anytime my plan or choice failed, I instantly was angry at myself. As if I expected perfection… as if I expected something more of myself. I really thought I was that smart. I sit here laughing at the concept… I really thought I’d thought of every precaution and when I didn’t, how dare I miss it.

Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books. It’s poetic and I feel like I have to read it much slower than any other book. I read parts of it over and over, because it not only intrigues me, but it’s meaty. Written by a man who had everything the world had to offer in his time, it made me realize how much my own actions were based entirely off of vanity. The very concept that I thought I’d be able to control my outcomes by overly thought out decisions was vanity, clear as day.

Ecclesiastes is written as reflections of an old man, a man who has lived and experienced much of life. He looks back on life and recognizes how futile the chase we pursue tends to be. I was looking through my moments like I could predict every outcome, escape every possible issue, and avoid all conflict. I was believing I had the knowledge of God, in some ways, because I actually thought I could contain such a vast amount of information… but I was wrong time and time again.

When my life crashed and burned in 2014, I’d fallen the hardest I’d ever fallen. I was so low, I stopped caring about what would come next. I wanted to give up and I didn’t really care about considering the consequences anymore — though I still subconsciously had my ways of doing so. Death was inviting and yet I couldn’t take my life for a number of reasons. Perhaps, the reason that always talked me out of it was, “how can I be sure I wont survive and live to hate what I’ve done?” So, I proceeded to make mistake after mistake, placing myself in dangerous positions, not caring anymore.

I’ve told people a number of times that suicidal perspectives saved my life. I faced every single fear, one by one, over the course of the next few years… and I am still facing my fears today. I’m not suggesting feeling suicidal is all that great, we are so loved by God and so capable of being used by God, the notion that we can’t press on is selfish. However, dying to self is a concept that needs to be understood in the surrendered world of God’s kids.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to trust the one who created everything. I need to trust the one who knows best. I need to trust my Father, Creator, the Love that never ends for me. Jesus presented this obvious notion a number of times, that we’d always be provided for, that God cared about us enough to give us gifts we couldn’t even imagine, and that there was no reason to be anxious about it — but also stressed the importance of leaving it in His hands, submitting to His control.