My sister came to visit and bake Christmas cookies with me on Thursday. She and I are both fairly new to motherhood; myself in just 17 months, and her only 4 months with my baby niece. As we took a lunch break from our rigorous baking, she and I discussed  the rather extreme and irrational fears mothers have for their children. Everything from dreams to quick glimpses of dangers surrounding them at the park, the market, and the zoo. We agreed that although they are rather extreme and sometimes a plague, they have their place in helping us to identify dangers around our children that others may not see, enabling us to protect our little ones from harm.

The very next morning 20 children were shot to death in their elementary school in Connecticut, and an additional 22 children were slashed by knife, although not killed, in China.

I thought at first to not write about this. I fear giving any publicity to these monstrosities, for that is surely what the attackers desired. However, I have found for my own sense of sanity, I have to think these things through. I told my sister Andi on Wednesday that I have had to stop reading the news, for the fear it invokes in me for my son. However, with attacks such as these, to this extent and toward such a target as these attackers had, I must process through them. My husband is not on Facebook, and so the only news he heard of the shooting in Connecticut was the text he received from me, and what he caught on the radio during his 10-minute commute home. Last night I recounted to him the various details I had read throughout the day of the attack. I felt bad sharing with him such devastating news that he had been spared from throughout the day, but it made me realize something about myself–I must talk it through, lest it kill me inside.

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” 2 Timothy 1:7. I heard someone point out recently, concerning this verse, that fear is indeed a spirit, but not one we are subject to. Much like temptation, lust, anger, pride, jealousy, depression, and confusion, these are all things that we have put away with the old self.

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17

We put away fear, for we belong to the One who has overcome all fear, and all evil which lies behind our fears. We overcome in Him!

“For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? ” 1 John 5:4-5

“What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?  He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?  Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies;  who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.  Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  Just as it is written,