By Books Author Denise Turney

Fear or Love, that is all that there is to choose from. What if the only choices that you had, that we all have, are between Fear and love? Nothing else.

Life seems much more complicated. But, is it?

Think back to your childhood. How old were you when you first felt fear, when you first felt afraid?

I remember this golden, brown German Shepherd across the street from where my family lived in Ohio. Back then, I was eight years old. As usual, when I was outside playing – riding a bike, enjoying a game of hopscotch or jumping rope – I was with my siblings and friends.

Fear Offers No Comfort

There certainly was comfort in the numbers. Yet, regardless of how many people were outside, when that German Shepherd (his name was “King”) showed up, people darted. I’m talking teenagers and kids. Folks broke out and headed for cover.

All of this fear over a German Shepherd who had broken his backyard chain again. The more intense the fear I was experiencing became, the more angry and helpless I felt. I also wanted the dog to just disappear, making it easy for the entire scene to be over.

Oh, but, when dogs break loose, they don’t go right back from whence they came. Instead, they explore, peeing on bushes and tree trunks. They also like to kick up dirt with their hind feet, as if to let every other dog in the neighborhood know how big and bad they are. And even if they don’t intend to, they scare a lot of kids.

Ever Changing Fear

My fear of “King” disappeared after my family moved to a different neighborhood. But, that wasn’t the end of fear for me. After “King”, there were bullies (the human kind), spooky movies, the nightly news, and a few bad grades that I was very concerned about showing my dad.

Fast forward to my adult years, and “King” was far at the back of my memory, certainly no longer something that pulled up fear in me. The 12 year old girl I’d been afraid of, the girl I let bully me in elementary school, didn’t even pop into my mind. She was long gone as it relates to fear, totally in the past.

But, don’t go thinking that I stopped choosing fear over love. In fact, in place of big neighborhood dogs, school bullies and a bad report card, there were bills, fear of the unknown, challenging work assignments and growing numbers of people I knew who were exiting their bodies or transitioning.

Yeah. The things that I chose to allow fear to use to bind me have changed. But, that type of change doesn’t mean anything unless I’m choosing love over fear.

Choose Love Instead Of Fear

The good news. It’s a choice that I’m paying attention to, practicing awareness so that I can choose love. Thing is, that fear, as you can see, takes on a myriad of forms. It’s content remains unchanged. But, the forms that fear uses seem always in motion.

Oddly, with love, it’s the content that I have long, perhaps always, focused on. Safe, warm feelings, a sense of belonging and conviction that I’m cared for are part of love’s content for me. Doesn’t matter if that content comes through my pet turtle, a friend, relative, engaging in my passion (writing) or listening to the smoothest song. If the content is there, I feel it. I appreciate it.

And the content never changes. It’s one of the things that I absolutely love about love. Perhaps it’s time that we all focused more on love’s content and less on fear and its myriad forms.

Toward this effort, several years ago, I wrote a book about what fear did to a town in Memphis, Tennessee. The title of that book is Spiral. Read the book and you may well be amazed at how far reaching, twisting, blinding and  binding fear can get to be. It’s worse than any virus. Once fear takes root, look out. Or better yet, choose love.

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