Category Archives: fighting fear

language of freedom: how we end the hostilities

Posted on by November 14, 2024

Like many of you, we’ve felt relief and encouragement over the last week or so of events…on the national scale, at least. At the state level, Alaska’s elections are still a dumpster fire of delay and obvious corruption. And we’re not alone. *friendly wave and fist bump to Arizona*

language of freedom: how we end the hostilities | Shannon Guerra

So it’s a relief, but it’s not over. And the following day, when nationwide results were confirmed, Vin said, “It’s like we’ve made it through Dunkirk, or Brooklyn Heights, or the Battle of Antietam.”

I looked at him and shook my head. He’s a nerd who’s read books on all the major wars and lots of the minor ones, but history isn’t my wheelhouse.

I have, however, read The Lord of the Rings…five times.

“Tell me in a language I understand,” I said. “You mean it’s like after the battle of Helm’s Deep, but Pelennor Fields and the Black Gate are still ahead.”

“Exactly.”

See? It helps to have a common language.

So we’ve won a really important battle, but not the whole war. The work is just beginning. All the cliches.

Because even when you get the results you want in an election, it’s not the end of the fight.

Even if four years brings amazing promises fulfilled, it doesn’t do much good if at the end of them we don’t have a culture that values life and truth, because it will swing back again into another morph of madness, trying to legislate and control lives rather than maintaining minimal government and protecting freedom.

At the root of it, the battle for freedom takes place in hearts – because hearts that don’t value purity, sanity, wisdom, and wholeness will never be free, and they will never really care about the freedom of others, either.

“This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”

– JFK (January 14, 1963, State of the Union Address)

Great men make good times; good times create weak men; weak men create hard times; hard times create great men. There are exceptions, of course. Patterns are important because they can serve as warnings to watch for, but they are not destiny.

If we want to break the cycle, we have to stop creating weak men, and I don’t think the way to do that is to intentionally shoot ourselves in the foot by creating failure and hard times.

We have to create Kingdom culture, deep and wide.

But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. 

But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

– 2 Corinthians 3:14-17

We move wide, laterally and in the present, by healing the generations who don’t really know who they are, who are fear-filled and enraged as a result of their own ignorance, deceived by everything spoon-fed to them in the media.

Many of them have had just enough religion and churchianity to swing far to one side, hating God and anything that smacks of Him, or to the other side, checking off boxes and claiming to be Christian without bearing any fruit that indicates a relationship with Jesus. Some of them film their mental breakdowns on TikTok (what level of broken narcissism thinks people will be interested in that?) and demand acceptance from everyone while refusing to treat others with basic respect. These are the adults who haven’t grown up, many of whom experienced trauma in their childhood and instead of healing through it, stopped maturing at that age. This is why we have middle-aged and older people who still act like six-year-olds.

But also we move deep, vertically and into the future, by intentionally raising great children who become great men and women, regardless of their circumstances. We teach them the language of freedom. And this means we need to nurture our families and marriages and communities, and be better spouses and parents and friends, and humbly work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.

Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

– 2 Corinthians 3:5-6

We need to raise kids who are aware of issues because we took the time to talk to them about them, rather than relegating hard discussions to someone else. That means spending time with them, talking with them, explaining why we do the things we do (and why we don’t do the things we don’t). It means taking responsibility for our kids’ education – and thus their values – rather than abdicating such a vital mission to vague institutions with minimal accountability and transparency. No matter what, we are the primary teacher, caregiver, attention-giver, and disciplinarian of our kids. At the end of the day – and preferably, throughout the day – we are the ones they come to, answer to, and seek refuge in.

I admit this isn’t the easiest thing in the world. As I type this, a kid is doing a chore a few feet behind me. And if she tells me one more time that she’s done when she’s not done, she’s just tired of doing it, I might throw this copy of The Fourth Turning out the window.

(Or down the hallway. Windows are expensive and it’s nine degrees outside. And also, it might scare the chickens.)

Many of our daily conversations with our kids center around food – growing it, raising it, buying it, eating it – and other choices we make about our health; these topics were never discussed in our own childhoods rife with dye-saturated sugar cereals that were thought to be canceled out by Flintstone vitamins. So to be honest, I’m probably more excited about the “MAHA” aspect of this recent victory than anything else, because we’ve prayed about this stuff for years and wondered if anything would ever be done about them. The economy and borders and “health services” have always been on the forefront, but true healthy living, not so much.

Not to lessen the importance of other spheres, but if everything else is addressed while our food supply is still tainted and healthy farming is still under attack and Big Pharma still profits from perpetuating sickness rather than healing people, we haven’t accomplished much. If our food and water are still allowed to be poisoned, are we really free at all?

Purity in food, purity in the gospel…I know, they don’t really seem related, but haven’t we seen enough corruption in both, and the debilitating effects of compromise? Impurity in any sphere does not produce a free people. It breeds slavery.

And that could be said for many facets of culture – for example, it doesn’t do any good to shift a society toward more constitutional beliefs if those who claim to be conservative are still addicted to porn and misogyny, if our civilization is still a dumpster fire of moral corruption. We need holistic solutions, not pet projects. We need Kingdom culture – because freedom is the common language, though we’ve been confused, distracted, and dissuaded by many counterfeits.

Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.

– Proverbs 14:34

No matter how good our intentions, our message will be poisoned if we compromise to the fear of man and the obsession of ourselves. If we’re centered on ourselves, whether in shame or insecurity or self pity on the one side or in arrogance and pride and presumption on the other, it’s vanity. If we’re consumed with the image in the mirror, what people will think of us…it doesn’t matter if we’re staring at ourselves out of things to complain about or things to be proud of; either way, it’s vanity. And vanity, like fear of man (are they really that different?) is idolatry.

And that’s slavery, too. We create a multitude of problems when we read someone else’s actions and words through the lens of our own insecurities.

But a truly free people, unhindered by the idolatry of vanity and fear of man, speak a language of boldness and authenticity that can’t help but draw people to freedom. Insecurities are disarmed; fearful control loses its grip. We don’t need the phony attractions of red dye or smoke machines or pretend identities when Holy Spirit is given reign to move through us.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

– 2 Corinthians 3:18

As I’m praying about this, I realize there’s good news in the midst of insanity: People who will film their screaming breakdowns for anyone to see are also people who, once redeemed, will not be hindered by fear of man when it comes to worshiping Jesus.

And in that sense, those of us who have been following Jesus have something to consider.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

– Ephesians 2:13-18

Our current culture looks at us and shakes their heads because we’ve known something they don’t, but we haven’t always communicated it in the best way. Freedom is not portrayed in tiny increments as we attempt (and fail) to make truth palatable to the masses by compromise. So it’s not that we need to water things down to become more relevant; it’s that we need to purify our message so it reveals freedom.

And freedom is its own draw. If we can give people a taste of it, we’ll win the next battle, too – and we’ll win it together.

rebuild: how we heal, protect, and recover

Posted on by October 31, 2024

We never need someone’s permission to do the right thing. Seems like that should be obvious, but apathy and cowardice and destruction hide behind many doors, and “I’m not allowed to” is sometimes one of them.

rebuild: how we heal, protect, and recover | Shannon Guerra

Years ago when the Matanuska River was flooding its banks and the local government was dinking around with bureaucratic red tape, we watched a house a few doors down from my grandma’s tip into the river as the water ate up the ground underneath it and then proceeded to slowly swallow the house as it floated toward the Knik Arm.

It was 1991. The edge of the river moved closer to her house every day, and if nothing happened by the time it got to her property line it would be too late, because that was a mere hundred feet from the foundation of her house. So while those “in power” did nothing (and does that mean they’re really in power at all?) my dad and uncles dropped concrete slabs down the embankment to shore up the side, deterring the rapid erosion. They saved her house, and probably several others downriver, before a series of dykes were installed to keep the Matanuska in check.

So now it’s 33 years later, and in another rural part of the country we have a much bigger problem:

People are stranded in disaster areas without food, water, or fuel, and institutions and government blowhards who are supposed to help are confiscating supplies, and clearly up to something else.

[Warning: Many of these videos I’ve linked have language and other details you will not want to play around your kids. But adults need to hear it – we’re not sugar; we won’t melt.]

Citizens try to help but are blocked by government officials and threatened with arrest. Government resources are grounded instead of helping…but that doesn’t stop them from taking credit for what civilians are doing on their own.

People were dying as a senile “president” flew over, blocking air traffic from those trying to deliver supplies, undoubtedly causing more deaths from the delay.

If all this sounds unbelievable to you and you think things are fine, you need to turn off your TV and stop listening to people who are paid to lie to you, and start listening to real people. Like here. And here. And here.

A government who sent billions of dollars across the world to foreign nations now says there’s nothing left to give to citizens, but then releases a meager $750 via the flick of a middle finger to Americans who’ve lost everything.

What is happening?

If you were paying attention to what happened in Maui, you probably already know.

So…abhorrent, dire conditions in our own country. I sit here, far away in Southcentral Alaska, at my desk and on the couch and at the kitchen table with my family, remote from it all and yet hyperaware that Alaska has its own vulnerabilities and enemies, foreign and domestic. Wherever you are in America, you do, too.

But what can we do?

With such need, and corruption, and distance, what can we do that goes beyond mailing a check? How do we help, how do we resist, and how do we protect our own communities?

And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.”

– Nehemiah 4:14

We create a life out of slow, single days, tiny beads on a string, and one event can wipe it all out. I look around, and everything I do is slow work: Growing food is slow, raising poultry is slow, writing is slow. Parenting and teaching and healing is slow. Supporting small businesses and strengthening families is slow.

It is easy to get bogged down looking too close at my own inabilities, and despair. The needs are immediate, relief needed right now. And we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But we must not capitulate to the enemy’s ploy to make us feel powerless and helpless.

Prayer is fast. Miracles are fast, and they’re needed right now.

Prayer reaches across the distance and touches people at the speed of thought, bringing supernatural protection and favor and wisdom and guidance. We don’t know the details and most of us can’t get there, but God does and can, and is there.

Prayer doesn’t care about the mocking, scoffing, spitting, disbelieving. Let them berate and see how much peace they find from their ignorant faithlessness. It doesn’t care about permission or blowhards or red tape; it soars right over, blasts right through, the agreement with God’s goodness releasing His power to change situations, to create something out of nothing, to lead those who don’t know where to go or where to look, to draw water from the rock.

So there’s that, and it’s definitely something.

I had a long conversation with one of our kids about all these events, and why we do what we do – why we shop certain places and avoid others, why we spend time learning and teaching things that aren’t on a curriculum. You can’t go wrong in learning about prayer, healing, security, and food, I told her. All we can do is the thing God’s telling us to right now, today, in this moment.

For example, when you learn about healing, you learn that there are four stages to it: hemostasis (stopping the bleeding), inflammation (scabbing over), rebuilding, and strengthening.

What strikes me about this is that none of it is done in isolation: At first, the closest blood cells come together to clot and protect the wound. But then, white blood cells and oxygen come in. Then red blood cells come in, helping to rebuild new tissue.

We have a huge gash in our Southeastern states right now, and the process of stopping the bleeding, clotting, and protection is in full force thanks to those who didn’t wait for permission to do the right thing. Meanwhile, those of us holding down the fort in other areas do well to strengthen our immediate surroundings, to fight against the attempts to obliterate our communities and culture. We don’t know when our own tissue could be injured, or our red blood cells called in to reinforce healing needed nearby.

When all else fails and you are overwhelmed, unsure of what to do or prioritize, look at the core strengthening things. What foundations need shored up? What relationship needs some extra time, or just an extra hug? What small task is going to bolster your day tomorrow? Do you need an extra hour of sleep, an extra glass of water? We can get so focused on the big things that we forget the little things until they turn into big things we could’ve prevented.

And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.

— Isaiah 32:17-18

There are so many voices out there. Many of them are good and true. But we still need to be quiet, to stop scrolling for a while, and listen for Him to speak specifically to us, just to us, in the quiet.

It’s important to starve the voices that aren’t true. We have to prioritize who we give the microphone to in our lives. We can turn the volume down on the excess noise in our society by trimming the amount of time we scroll.

We can’t go wrong in reaching out, making stronger connections, hugging the prickly kid, texting the distant kid, feeding more broth and tea to the sick kid. We can read good books, pray for our neighbors, grow and cook real food, memorize Scripture, learn new skills. We can repair rather than replace, create more and consume less. We can smile and talk with the person in line at the grocery store or post office. We can filter our media consumption, and prioritize what gives life, beauty, joy, and wisdom.

We will probably never regret doing things like deep cleaning our kitchen, taking flowers to a friend, or spending an extra few minutes talking with our kids at bedtime.

These are the things that bring oxygen, that create healing, that prevent injury and sickness, that declare to the world, We are building Kingdom culture and we have no intention of stopping. Where it’s damaged and hurting, we will rebuild and reinforce and strengthen, and as many times as it is wounded, we will keep rebuilding, and won’t wait for paperwork to go through or for bureaucrats to finish dinking around or for a government blowhard to give us the green light.

We are Kingdom people; we live in the green light, and we will keep moving forward.

We don’t need anyone’s permission to love our neighbor. We don’t need the government’s permission to protect our families or build and strengthen our culture. We just need to do it.

making it: we rise above fear by changing our minds

Posted on by September 25, 2024

It seems like when you live with boys, your immune system has the choice to either toughen up and be stronger than average, or to keel over and just let you die. So far, five boys later, I think we’re making it.

making it: we rise above fear by changing our minds | Shannon Guerra

But here’s why it’s such a miracle: Boys do things – all kinds of things – except for washing their hands. Did you scrub the toilet? Check. Clean the catbox? Yes, ma’am. Scoop out the chicken coop? Uh huh.

And we, silly parents, ask these questions as we are watching them in the kitchen, spreading peanut butter on a tortilla. And then – and only then – do we remember to ask the obvious question, which should have been the first question, even though it’s too late anyway, the damage is done:

Did you wash your hands?

“Ummmmm….” Stalling is always a bad sign. Especially when it’s followed by an almost silently whispered, “nope.”

Serenity now, Lord Jesus.

Vince and I sit on the couch dumbfounded as the boy drops the lunch implements on the counter and runs to the bathroom. I consider donating the entire container of peanut butter to the chickens, and Vin quietly but dramatically pleads the blood of Jesus over our entire home, asking for a special consecration over the fridge and silverware drawer.

(Side note: This post might prevent any dinner guests from accepting invitations for the next three months.)

There are so many things that could go wrong, and it’s best not to think of them. It’s best just to be grateful for grace, for strong immune systems, for a life that allows for such activity, and for healthy boys who are (please God) learning good habits.

And this is good to remember at night, or more accurately, at 3 or 4 am, when panicked thoughts about chickens and homeschool and kids’ behavior and inflation and taxes and paperwork and vehicle woes and world events and a million other valid concerns start crowding in as you lay there, wide awake, wondering if you’re going to make it. There are so many things that could go wrong, and it’s best not to think of them.

But we do think of them. Many of them require action on our part – like making an appointment, or paying a bill, or filling out forms, or disciplining children, or disciplining ourselves, or being more frugal…and all these actions require thinking.

But what is not required is worrying, or partnering with fear, or expecting the worst. None of those have to be in our thinking, though they tend to be our default.

So we need to be rewired. We need to forge new pathways for better thoughts.

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

– 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

Have you ever considered that agreeing with fear – which is what worry is – is making a “lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God?” It is.

God is not worried or fearful. And we have the mind of Christ, and we can trust God…so we need to agree with Him. (Listen, self.)

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

– Ephesians 4:17-19

This isn’t usually how we apply this scripture, but roll with me here: If we have a belief that truly sets us apart from our old ways, our thinking should demonstrate that. But worry is futile, a darkened understanding. Worries are ignorant of God’s love and trust; when we worry we are hardened in our old paths and ways of thinking.

And we wouldn’t normally associate it with making us callous or greedy, but consider…when we indulge in fretting and fears, are we not giving ourselves up to a sort of sensuality? Isn’t the distrust of God’s goodness and love an act of impurity?

Huh. Still thinking on this. It goes on:

But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,

and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,

and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

– Ephesians 4:20-24

We have lain there awake in seasons of waiting and waiting, crying out for breakthrough, telling God, “I know You’re good and faithful, but this is still so hard, so it must be that I’m not good and faithful.”

And He reminds us that victory is not a pass/fail test or a zero sum game because things are much more complicated than what we are seeing. We are seeing “if not this, then this” but reality is “not this or this or this, but all these other things in varying degrees and intensities.”

Many, many things are actively in the process of working out. Together. All at the same time, and all at different times. And in the meantime, it looks like a mess.

Will we make it, though? we ask in desperation.

Did you make it in 2004? He asks, turning the question around. Did you make it in 2007, and 2008, and 2011, and 2012, 2013, and every year since then? Did you make it when you didn’t know where you’d go in 2017? Did you make it when the rug was pulled out from under you in 2018? Did you make it through the chaos and stupidity of 2020, and the upheaval in 2022?

Did you make it last year, Love?

Yes. Over and over, in every crisis, real or perceived – we made it.

So we have something still to do:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 

Wait, this is me interrupting again. Is our mind – our brain – part of our bodies? Yes? So our thoughts also should be presented as a living sacrifice. This is where we make the sacrifice of praise even when it still doesn’t feel praiseworthy yet. We lay there in the midst of the flying fears and whisper Thank You because we know He’s in control and He loves us and He has this all covered, even when we don’t know what to do. (He knows how dumb we are, remember. And that is a huge comfort.)

Okay, carry on:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

– Romans 12:1-2

If agreeing with fear is an example of being conformed to this world (and it is, I’ll fight you over it) then rising above the fear and thanking God that we can trust Him while we let go of our regrets and insecurities and assumptions and negative imaginings…is one way we are transformed by the renewal of our mind.

We choose the thoughts that get to play. Fear wants us to just keel over and die, but God has made us to be stronger than average.

Has everything always turned out the way we wanted? No. It’s still a fallen world, a clean-up operation.

But so much has turned out better than we could’ve imagined. We’re all making it. And as we’re grateful to God and trusting Him, renewing our minds and offering the sacrifice of praise, we’ll continue to do so.

After car accidents and miscarriage and illness and grief and bank failures and huge expenses and big risks and unexpected pregnancies and medical corruption and corporate gaslighting and global deception and financial loss and leaving the familiar and starting over when it seemed like the most foolish thing to do… we made it. And you did, too.

We all made it. And here we are, by the mercies of God.