I am very grateful to share the following testimony, which helped me understand the healing effect of overcoming fear.
When my daughter was about six years old, she came to find me in the church auditorium after a service. I was standing at the podium, and she was delighted at the cozy little space under it, which she crawled into to play. She had some pipe cleaners—metal wires with different colored fuzzy material wrapped around them—that she had shaped into animals. On the floor underneath the podium was an electrical outlet. Out of curiosity, my daughter stuck one of the “animals” into the outlet, which immediately created an electrical arc, causing a black burn on the carpet and severely burning my daughter’s hands.
I picked her up immediately and began to comfort her, but I couldn’t help feeling a rush of fear that she would have a permanent injury. This was followed by a sense of guilt that I hadn’t been paying close enough attention to what she was doing. But then I remembered something in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “We should master fear, instead of cultivating it” (p. 197). Merriam-webster.com says to cultivate means to “foster the growth of.” We cultivate fear when we look at a problem repeatedly, review the details, search for its cause or the person at fault, or worry about what the outcome will be. So I quieted my thoughts through prayer instead, and this helped me feel the presence of God’s love and enabled me to reassure my daughter and care for her.
