are you afraid of the dark?

So it seems that I'm afraid again. Often afraid over things that I can just leave to God in prayer.

Not afraid like my students tell me they are afraid of the darkness and living alone.

But, actually, now that I've put it that way--in the broad, metaphorical sense of "darkness and living alone," that's certainly an aspect of what I fear.

I e-mailed my friend P. a couple days ago and sent him a poem to read and critique for me as his time permits. That's not really what I'm concerned about--despite my recurring feeling that these recent poems of mine are nothing to be proud of. No. I'm concerned, like another situation a couple months ago, that whatever I've said about Christianity in my e-mail will be scoffed at and that somehow he won't respect me as much anymore. And that I will feel like it was my fault someone got turned off by Christianity again.

I don't like that I worry about things like this--that I worry about someone rejecting me as a friend because of the beliefs that I hold, or that it makes me afraid to talk about my beliefs in certain situations, rather than standing firm to them. Rather than letting them glow.

Also, I'm afraid that I keep getting my hand caught in the little flap on the vending machine of ideas and expectations (expectations for myself and for others), and that I get upset and overwhelmed when I can't quite pull free or let go of these ideas that are only making me hurt.

I'm also afraid that my refusal to discuss certain feelings--which to me seem like inarticulable and immovable hurdles--is making these things become more and more like mountains to me. And I know that I will either need to scale or to move these mountains sometime soon.

Faith is the key, eh? Nothing on my own.

This darkness has no dominion over me.