eliminating your fears
Like a lot of us, I owe a lot to my parents.
My mom has always had this really fun, care-free spirit about her. She would always use one-liners like “It’s just life, don’t take it so seriously!” or “This too shall pass.” during hard or challenging times.
Me and my mom in the Teton Mountains after my senior year of high school.
One thing that has always served me well me was her idea of eliminating fears around challenges that felt too big or risks that I thought may not be worth taking.
Whenever I’m afraid of doing anything that feels beyond what I’m capable of, or taking a chance that feels larger than life, my mom always helps me talk through my fears. We’ll talk and talk and talk about them until I always draw the same conclusion: to get rid of them.
Picture this: my husband (Slade) and I had been married for 5 months. We’d just bought our first home and were getting ready for our first big holiday as a married couple. It was around Thanksgiving-time when we learned his job would be taking us to Michigan.
Michigan…
By Christmas, those two newlywed kids (who had lived in the south their entire lives) would be living up north. Where it snowed — a lot. Where they knew no one. Where they were half a country away from the only place they’d ever called home.
Truth be told, I was freaking out. Naturally, I called my mom.
“What are you so afraid of?” she asked me. Obviously I was afraid of a lot of things.
Like what if we ran our car off the side of the road (because it’s true, southerners really can’t drive in the snow) and we have no one to call and help us?
Side note: that actually did happen and wouldn’t ya know it, we lived to tell the tale.
Slade, Nala (who was not enthusiastic about the cold, as you can tell) and I on our front porch in Michigan right after our move.
“Slade’s job is fairly new. What if he gets fired and then we’re all the way in Michigan... And we’re stuck there?”
“Bailie, first of all, you’re never ever ‘stuck’ anywhere in life. But okay, let’s just say he gets fired. Then what would happen?”
“Then we bought a house in Michigan and now we can’t pay our mortgage.”
“Okay, so you can’t pay your mortgage. Then what would happen?”
“We’d have to sell our house and move back to Tennessee. And we’d have no money.”
“Okay, so you have to sell your house and move back home. Then what would happen?”
“We’d probably have to move in with you until he found a new job!”
“Y’all could live with us - that’d be no problem. Then what would happen?”
“I guess eventually we’d get back on our feet…?”
“Exactly. You’d survive. You’d be fine. Just follow the job to Michigan and see where life takes you.”
So, we moved to Michigan. And let me tell you, it wasn’t always easy there. The sun only shines for 3 months out of the year in Michigan for goodness sake!
But those hard times and that chapter is what led me to starting my first business. That time in my life is when I fell in love with learning in a way I never had before.
That’s where Slade and I grew stronger in our marriage, too. Being challenged like that in our first years of marriage helped us lay the most solid foundation!
We ended up moving back to Tennessee after about 2 years (a promotion for Slade that led us back home - thank God!) but, had we not taken that chance, I have no idea how our life would look today.
Eventually I started talking through fears with Slade, too.
In 2020, we bought a 50 year old fixer-upper so we could move into the zip code we’d always dreamt of calling home. At the time, that old house was the only way we could afford to get in - but we wanted it bad enough and so, why not?
Besides, we’d always thought it’d be fun to flip a house. And I was prepared, too. As in, I’d watched every HGTV episode with Chip & Joanna Gaines and I’d even read both of their books.
Turns out, that being the extent of home renovation experience doesn’t exactly qualify you for a project as big as ours was….
“I think we bit off more than we can chew…” Slade said.
“It’s okay, we’ve got this. One step at a time. What’s the worst that can happen?”
Our fixer-upper house the day we got it under contract. It was a toss up between what had to go first: the yellow door or the green shutters!
Ha! Famous last words before starting a home renovation project! If you’ve ever flipped a house, you know what all can go wrong. And, let me tell you, a lot went wrong.
But y’all, we gained so much from our fixer-upper experience. You’d be surprised at how much you can learn on Youtube! And with each new skill we learned, the more confident we became. The more risks we’d take. The more creative we’d allow ourselves to be…
And before we knew it, we stumbled our way into turning a major profit on the house flip. When we sold it, we made more money than we’d ever made before. This afforded us a newer house down the road, in that same town we’d always dreamt of calling home. Only this house wasn’t falling apart — a major plus.
If we hadn’t been willing to talk down those fears, we definitely wouldn’t have the house we call home today.
Why am I sharing all of this with you? Because I want to be clear that our journey hasn’t always been easy. A lot of the big decisions we’ve made and the risks we’ve taken have led us down painfully challenging roads. And I was afraid to take those first steps a lot of the time.
But the fears we eliminated, and trusting that The Lord was always directing our steps, eventually led us right where we were supposed to be. We’d always come out better for it on the other side. And looking back, I had nothing to be afraid of in the first place!
So what are you so afraid of? You have a big change you want to make or an opportunity you want to chase. You have that dream on your heart and a risk you secretly want to take…
So just start with this: be honest (really, be honest with yourself) and answer this question for me — What’s the worst that could happen?
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