Fear:  a strong unpleasant feeling caused by being aware of danger or expecting something bad to happen.

Being afraid.

This may or may not surprise you, but for most of my childhood I was one of those kids who was pretty much ruled by fear.

How did it start?  I don’t know.
But I remember long ago when I really started to discover the magic of books and expressed the desire to my dad for something great to read, he showed me his collection of Stephen King novels sitting quietly (but so incredibly loudly) on the shelf, and sent me off with his first pick, Salem’s Lot.
(Dad, I swear I’m not blaming this on you!!
Mostly.)

Ummm, yeah.  I couldn’t actually fall asleep with that book sitting on my nightstand.
It was too evil and I’m positive the monsters in it would have been watching me while I slept with some sort of foul smelling saliva running down their bloody teeth, so I had to move it across the room and cover it before I felt safe enough to actually shut my eyes.

I was THAT kid.
Poor Dad didn’t realize as he was and still is a horror movie lover and isn’t by nature very susceptible to “fear” having its way with him.
So lovely of him to not pass that gene on to me.

But Fear likes to play the innocent deceiver, and I soon found myself going back to Dad’s shelf over and over again and reading just about every single Stephen King novel published at the time.

Why??!
SO dumb.
I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it’s because there’s an excitement that comes along with fear that seems to be a bit addicting.

Some handle that well.
Others are so mentally affected that they aren’t able to walk upstairs alone to their bedroom at night and require their older brother to be verbally beaten into submissively walking his younger, immature, and ridiculously annoying sister to her room so she can reach her bed without experiencing a complete mental breakdown along the way.
*AHEM*  We all have our problems.

For some…for many, I dare say, Fear is a four letter word.
It comes in many different forms and effects our lives in many different ways.
And it is debilitating.

It can get in and take over everything.
Every decision that is made, in some cases every thought that is formed- all of it, ruled by fear.

But here’s the thing I’ve learned over the years (while benefiting from being married to a man who refuses to let fear control any part of him),
living a life ruled by fear is actually not really living at all.

Life is scary.

We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.
And I for one am not a big fan of not knowing.

But I AM a fan of joy.  And excitement.  Of success.  Of victory.  And of love.

The problem is, I can’t get any of that ^^^ while letting fear rule me.

So I stopped feeding the fear. (No more scary books or movies or any darn thing of the sort was allowed into my life, for starters.)

And I let the people in my life who I know aren’t ruled by fear take me by the hand and lead me down the scary paths…
the ones that I knew were good even though I was still afraid of them.

And I prayed for strength, courage, and maybe a little sedative along the way.
Kidding!!! (Mostly.)

It was HARD.
And it didn’t always go well.  It DOESN’T always go well.
Sometimes we both tripped and face-planted right into the mud.

But dang if we didn’t walk out the end of it each time with a whole new level of happiness that I just didn’t see coming.

So I kept letting them lead me, and I found myself getting stronger and stronger along each path.

And now?
Well you may just find me pulling one of my kiddos along the path behind me, nagging them to open their eyes while they’re walking.

‘Cause the feeling of LIVING is a lot more addicting than anything Stephen King has ever tempted me with.
(No offense, Stephen…nothing but respect for your extreme talent!)

And it’s maybe the one addiction I can think of that I’m all about my children feeding.

What that has to do with this week’s cake project(s)?
Zilch.
But you’re kindo’ used to that by now,
and sometimes telling our own stories in the hope that it will help someone else battle their way through life is even BETTER than cake stuff.

Sometimes.  Xx

(Edible Art Paints used in the creation of both of these cakes, and gorgeous Sprinkle Pop sprinkles used on the ice cream themed cake!)