Fear sounds like wisdom.
Life depends on knowing the difference.
At sixteen, I faced a choice: heed my father’s apocalyptic warnings and flee to Australia, or defy them and risk death.
I began to ask a question that has shaped my life ever since:
Is this wisdom, or fear in disguise?
He had a compelling list of reasons why the world was collapsing, and logic said to run: He’s my father, who am I to know better?
But another voice, quiet and childlike, simply said: I don’t want to leave.
I stayed, then went to college. I built the life I thought would make me whole—career, freedom, achievement.
But one day that quiet voice emerged again: I miss intimacy.
I made a resolution to approach any woman I found attractive. When I saw a beautiful stranger on the beach weeks later, my mind supplied compelling reasons not to.
Is this wisdom, or fear in disguise?
I approached. Two years later, Anna and I married by that same beach.
Each time, the pattern was the same: fear sounded wise, the quiet voice knew better, and courage listened.
I didn’t know it then, but listening would keep leading me deeper.
The ultimate test came through Anna herself.
Anna introduced me to Orthodox Christianity. I’d spent years on my own spiritual path, but my attitude toward organized religion was simple: it controls, divides, deceives.
Occasionally, I went to church with her family out of politeness. I’d stand tense, breath shallow, mind critiquing every word. They won’t get me, I’d think.
But eventually, I had to ask: Is this wisdom, or fear in disguise?
The people I met didn’t fit my stereotype of the naive and irrational seeker. In fact, they seemed to carry something I didn’t—a sense of peace.
So I got curious. I read the Bible, spoke with priests, and slowly discerned what I believed.
After a year of reading and wrestling, one claim stayed with me more than all the rest: you don’t have to be afraid.
This claim shook me. I’d spent my life scanning for threats. Fear was wisdom. To be wise and unafraid seemed impossible.
Yet the idea of a merciful God who released me from control sparked both skepticism and longing. If true, it meant I could finally loosen my grip and do something rebellious: trust.
It terrified me, but it also felt like a gift I had never been given.
The quiet, childlike voice emerged again: I don’t want to be afraid.
I decided to convert before marrying Anna. But the morning of my baptism showed me what surrender actually meant.
From the moment I awoke, an existential dread unlike anything I’d known consumed me. A heaviness that felt like a black shroud pulling me into the earth.
I could barely speak or walk. Anna said later it was the most pained she’d ever seen me.
Baptism. Marriage. Both within two weeks. Everything I’d protected—my independence, my skepticism, my freedom—was being surrendered.
What if I’m making a mistake?
Is this wisdom, or fear in disguise?
I confessed overlooking the Pacific.
Then sat in a horse trough as the priest plunged me beneath cold water three times.
And finally: breath.
Drying off in white, I felt as if something dark had finally left me. That night I wrote a poem:
The fear, it's there, but weakening
Day by day
I believe in the day
It won't be there at all
The Spring, the Fall
All shall pass in peace
The fear, it's gone
What a great relief!
For the first time, peace felt stronger than fear.
I used to think courage meant conquering fear. Control, mastery, certainty.
I was wrong.
Courage is listening to that quiet voice, even when there’s every reason not to.
Not control. Surrender.
Every morning now, I read the Bible. Not because I’ve conquered doubt—I haven’t—but because the quiet voice led me here. To connection. To something larger than the self I was protecting.
I’m still afraid. But now, beside fear’s voice, I’m building something stronger: love. Toward God, toward Anna, toward the life my heart called me to.
It didn’t make fear disappear. It gave me something to surrender into—and with surrender comes freedom.
Fear still warns: protect yourself, play it safe.
It sounds wise, but I know the cost.
My father never stopped preparing for disaster.
Each year the threats changed—radiation, war, famine—but the fear stayed.
He lost his marriage, his friends, his home. Eventually, his children.
He’s still waiting for the world to end. And in a way, it already has.
I didn’t hide from the world in the way he did, but I built my own kind of bunker: freedom, control, self-sufficiency.
I achieved everything I thought would keep me safe, yet I only felt hollow.
That’s what fear does: it promises safety and delivers isolation.
It can keep us alive, but it costs us life itself.
Where is fear sounding wise in your life?
And what does the quiet voice say in return?