Roots and Wings.
For the past month, I have been struggling mightily with fear. You see, around four weeks ago I was blessedly – and very unexpectedly! – accepted into a Master’s program five states away. Dozens of phone calls, e-mails, and logistical considerations later, everything appears to be in order. Great, right? This is a wonderful, unique opportunity to build on my undergrad. It’s a brilliant mechanism of exposure to the graduate-level coursework that I hope to one day encounter in medical school. It means a year of studying global health issues in a pervasively warm, sunny climate. The very prospect of this experience is brimming with the promise of new-ness: new places, new faces, new knowledge, new insight, new (and very welcome) challenges. The Tiana that I was two years ago would not have hesitated to jump sky-high at this chance; she wouldn’t have thought twice. And yet, today’s Tiana came within an inch of declining. How could this be?
The simple answer, to reiterate, is fear: fear of failure, fear of change, fear of making the wrong choice, fear of missing precious moments in the lives of my loved ones, fear of the cost, fear of being forgotten. From a logical standpoint, most of these concerns are completely unsubstantiated, absurd. Emotionally, though, it has all felt so severe that it borders on sheer terror (and thereby threatens to induce complete paralysis). Such fear, when entertained even in the slightest, is all-consuming. It necessitates and perpetuates its own existence by forcing the fearer to ruminate day and night on the pessimism so intrinsic to its nature. We continually ask: “What if this? What if that? What is going to go wrong? When will the other shoe drop?”
The old adage – “If you feed your fears, your faith will starve” – rings clear and true in times like these. For doubt and fear so often eclipse hope and trust, preventing any glimpse of a silver lining and extinguishing a dream like the wind does a candle. As much as our spirits want to rise up in hope and say, “This is possible!”, we often allow experience or concrete pragmatism or this or that to discourage us, to overpower and ultimately stifle the anticipation of possibility. But we must remember that our old saying has an addendum, a flip side. We must remember that the reverse is also true, and in some cases we must re-train ourselves to think and dream accordingly. For fueling our faith will surely starve our fears.
For me, this equates to reminding myself that it’s possible to have both roots and wings. That leaving home doesn’t mean uprooting or demolishing the foundation that I have here. That even with poor decisions in the past, God hasn’t let me fall on my face; He’s caught me. That life is change and we never quite know what’s going to happen next, which is an exciting and beautiful reality! By bearing these things in mind, the old Tiana is slowly resurfacing, or maybe she’s just waking up from a long nap.
So two weeks from today, I go! I’m diving wholeheartedly into school again, and despite the countless variables and questions and fears (which, thank the Lord, are waning on a daily basis), I refuse to hesitate any longer. This is not the time to play it safe or choose the comforts of home over the vulnerabilities of the great unknown. It’s the time to trust the doors that God’s opened and take the first step, even when I can’t see the entire staircase.
You can have roots and wings.
Captivated Me 