{"id":626,"date":"2017-02-20T23:46:24","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T20:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/?p=626"},"modified":"2017-09-20T23:49:56","modified_gmt":"2017-09-20T20:49:56","slug":"what-are-you-afraid-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/what-are-you-afraid-of\/","title":{"rendered":"What are you afraid of?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Georgia Coats<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYou gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.\u201d<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 Eleanor Roosevelt<\/em><\/p>\n

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The best part about cold winter months in Michigan is snuggling under warm blankets, reading or telling stories with my kids.\u00a0 In these moments I often pause just to take it all in, and then thank God for the beauty of such simple yet priceless memories.\u00a0\u00a0 Children truly are a treasure and a gift in this life.\u00a0 Recently, I took part in a short, two-question survey on FEAR.\u00a0 The first question was: What is something you are afraid of? \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>A lot of things came to mind\u2026debt, disease, destruction\u2026but if I had to pick just one to write down, I would say that what I fear most regularly is something horrible happening to my children.\u00a0 As a mom, I do all I can to protect my children from harm. I teach them how to be safe, I stay near them in uncertain circumstances, and I try to keep them healthy.<\/p>\n

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These things were going through my mind as we read the historical account of the birth of Jesus the Messiah together.\u00a0 We got to the dark part of the story where a corrupt leader, King Herod, was feeling threatened by the news of a young Messiah being born.\u00a0 Out of fear, King Herod terrorized the Palestinian town and region he governed, and ordered the mass slaughter of all baby boys under two years old.\u00a0 As we read through the account, my eight-year-old son quickly named our young friend that fit that description.\u00a0 We all agreed that it was horrible to imagine our friends losing their 1\u00bd-year-old son to the terror of a corrupt leader.<\/p>\n

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For days I was troubled by this disturbing account of age and gender profiling that went on as a result of the Messiah\u2019s birth.\u00a0 The families of those baby boys weren\u2019t celebrating the birth of a promised and foretold anointed one sent from God.\u00a0 Instead, they grieved deep loss around the event that led to mass extermination of baby boys in and around Bethlehem.\u00a0 The story recounts that King Herod was \u201cterrified\u201d at the news of a prophetic Messiah-King entering the world and being revered by foreign Wise Men from the East.\u00a0 He saw this child as a threat to his powerful position of leadership.\u00a0 But the birth of Jesus also stirred a new hope far and wide.\u00a0 The coming of a promised Messiah reminded the world that God Most High is near to His people.<\/p>\n

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I tried to imagine myself living in a time and place of such need for hope\u2014a world of terror and destruction enacted by powerful people.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t take me long to realize that that is our world.\u00a0 Those are the bleak circumstances facing so many Yemeni people today.\u00a0 According to a recent interview that the Yemeni American News <\/strong>had with the President of the National Association of Yemeni Americans (NAYA), AbdulHakem a. Alsadah,<\/strong> the United Nations estimate 3 million \u201cdisplaced\u201d Yemeni people.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201c<\/strong>There is no international awareness about this crisis,\u201d Alsadah stated.\u00a0 Tears stream down my face when I see pictures of Yemeni children who are near death due to acute malnutrition.\u00a0 My heart breaks as I read stories about parents in Yemen who are forced to make hard decisions about losing their children, either to disease, destruction or starvation.\u00a0 According to a December 2016 article in www.theGuardian.com<\/a>, one man tells of how he and his other children don\u2019t eat so they can pay for his young daughter\u2019s cancer medication.\u00a0 How does a father have to decide that?\u00a0 How does any parent face that kind of fearful reality and not lose hope?<\/p>\n

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The second question in my survey was: What do you do when you are afraid?\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I am often overcome by the flood of images, emotions, and information to process around this crisis in Yemen.\u00a0 It\u2019s too much for a mother\u2019s heart to read about parents\u2019 worst fears coming true as they try to just keep their children alive.\u00a0 It makes me want to hold my children tighter and never let them out of my sight.\u00a0 It makes me want to turn off the news because I can\u2019t possibly process all the destruction going on in the world\u2014in Yemen, in Syria.\u00a0 But what can I do about it?\u00a0 Fear and ignorance are the easy ways out, at least initially. \u00a0If I raise my kids in fear, they are set up to react in fear. \u00a0There\u2019s a reason why the angels who came to announce the birth of the Messiah always started by saying, \u201cFear Not.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s because we do fear.\u00a0 When the angels appeared, people were terrified.\u00a0 We are afraid, and reacting in fear has consequences of hate and destruction.\u00a0 It leads to acts of terror, like King Herod\u2019s fearful reaction to breaking news.\u00a0 His reaction of terror led to him terrorizing an entire group of people.\u00a0 His fearful reaction had consequences.<\/p>\n

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Psychologist Dr. Susan Jeffers says that the ultimate human fear is that \u201cwe can\u2019t handle it,\u201d whatever \u201cit\u201d may be.\u00a0 I look in on these horrible stories of children dying in wartime and think I could never be able to handle it.\u00a0 But in war, children become our hope.\u00a0 They represent our future.\u00a0 In their eyes we see that we must go on, because we hope the best for them.\u00a0 Hope and children go together.\u00a0 The father in Yemen tries to keep all his children alive by juggling the desperate needs for both medication and food.\u00a0 The hope that the birth of Jesus the Messiah would bring was shrouded in the despair of male infanticide.\u00a0 Nevertheless, God Most High sends His chosen ones to a messy world because we need to hear from Him.\u00a0 It is good to be near God<\/em><\/strong>, is the reminder from the Zabur.<\/p>\n

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Author and educator Hal Lindsey said that, \u201cMan can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without\u00a0hope.\u201d\u00a0 Hope keeps us alive.\u00a0 In the worst of our despair, hope anchors our souls.\u00a0 It has to. \u00a0Otherwise we wouldn\u2019t survive the fear, terror and destruction that surrounds us.\u00a0 Education, compassion, prayer, hope.\u00a0 These are the things we must hold on to when we are afraid.\u00a0 God have mercy on the many displaced Yemeni children and their families.\u00a0 May they know a hope and a future outside of their misery.\u00a0 May they experience the hope that God Most High comes near to His people.<\/p>\n

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What is something you\u2019re afraid of?\u00a0 What do you do when you are afraid?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So, as you really stop to look fear in the face<\/em><\/strong>, join me in trying a few of these things:<\/p>\n

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