Running From Fear, Walking Into the Desert and Finding Life Again

138 Pages·2017·0.63 MB·English

by  Thad Cummings

Running From Fear

Running
From Fear
Walking Into the Desert
and Finding Life Again
Thad Cummings
© 2018 Thad Cummings
Running From Fear
Walking Into the Desert and Finding Life Again
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Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Elm Hill, an imprint of Thomas
Nelson. Elm Hill and Thomas Nelson are registered trademarks of
HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.
Elm Hill titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Library Congress Control Number: 2017915190
ISBN 978-1-595558336 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-595546920 (Hardbound)
ISBN 978-1-595558398 (eBook)
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
Part 1: Uncovering the Fear
1: Fear as the Root of All Evil 3
2: Justifying and Avoiding Fear 9
3: Looking Backwards 15
4: Don’t Take Everything Anything Personally 21
5: Losing It All, Turning the Corner,
and Taking One Step Forward 31
6: Hurt People Hurt People 39
7: Enduring Despair 47
Part 2: Surrendering to the Fear
8: Walking into the Desert 59
9: Fear of Fear, Itself (Desert Continued) 69
10: Surrender 77
11: Letting Go of Outcomes and Expectations 83
12: When Enough Really Is Enough 93
13: Finding Connections 101
14: Finding Grace 109
15: Ending the Cycle 115
Resources 119
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Acknowledgments
This book is only possible because of the countless people—
mentors, teachers, authors, therapists, spiritual directors,
friends, and strangers—who have shared their stories and wis-
dom with me over the years. It is because of their guidance that
I was able to enter and face my own story to be able to share this
with you today. This book is meant to be a gift that came from
the interconnectedness of hundreds of people, not just me.
A special thanks to the many who have listened to me,
ranted, critiqued, and edited these pages to help sort out the
mess in my head and get it organized on paper. And to people,
like Marcia, who set aside their own workload to spend dozens
of hours making sure my book actually looks like a book.
All the credit does not fall to me because my name is on the
cover. We truthfully do nothing or create anything in this life
alone—that is the beauty of it.
vii

Introduction
It is one of my most vivid memories going back to that perfectly
crisp Michigan fall day in 2011. I was working out with my
sister-in-law at the gym. She was tirelessly trying to lose weight
after giving birth to her second child and asked if I could help.
We were ending the night by jogging a mile and she was pushing
herself as fast as she could, so I decided to follow suit. I was three
minutes into a full-blown sprint when my heart started pacing
around 180 beats per minute. Getting light-headed, I decided to
hop off the treadmill and bring my heart rate back under control
as I was uncomfortably queasy. I stepped outside to let the cool
air dance off the beads of sweat coming down my cheeks, hop-
ing for a sigh of relief. A few minutes went by, then five, then ten
minutes and my heart was still pacing in the 150s; this had never
happened before. My sister-in-law could see how pale I was and
asked if we should head out, to which I eagerly agreed.
I drove her home and decided to head for my folks’ house
just down the road. On a normal day it would not be uncom-
mon for my resting heart rate to hover around fifty-five beats
per minute, but after twenty minutes not only had my heart
continued to race, my hands and feet also began to tingle. The
ix