Confronting fear in an unsafe world
As 13-year-old Susie Davis sat behind her desk in a classroom at school, she didn’t realize how much and for how long her life was going to change. She and the rest of her classmates had just witnessed the brutal murder of their English teacher. There was shock, there was terror, and there were questions.
That was 1978; before Columbine, before Sandy Hook, before the phenomenon of school shootings had been fully exposed to the American populous. Much less known, however, were the affects those shootings have on their survivors.
How do you process seeing something as tragic as Susie saw?
For years, Susie struggled with pure fear; making it hard for her to trust anyone, including God.
“People said just don’t be afraid. That was not even a possibility. I didn’t know how to unravel that”
But as time went on, Susie found people in her local church who let her be broken. That, she says, was the first step to confronting fear in a world which she knew firsthand was very unsafe.
Susie shares how she went from trusting no one and fearing everyone, to trusting only one:
“I really credit that small group of women that I met with when I was going through all the hard stuff with letting me be broken. Other people don’t fix us; God fixes and God heals us. He repairs.”
Susie also says that for people who’re struggling with fear — it’s OK to find a counselor:
“I would totally talk to a counselor because that’s what their job is: to be a safe person and to allow for healing. Healing is not usually spontaneous and it takes time. Don’t lose heart. Maybe you feel like you take three steps forward two steps back. That is OK. God’s OK with that.”
