Chapter - 3

Overcoming Fears Concerning Love, Marriage And Other Human Relations Problems

The secret of successful love is to love without fear . . . love is a twelve-sided affair . . . to love is to know God . . . let not your heart be troubled... live with a purpose.

Story From Life:

The Woman Who Gorged Herself on Apples of Fear

"There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us."-ST. JOHN 4:18-19

A few years ago while I was lecturing on how to overcome fear a most unusual thing happened. As I talked about the Garden of Eden story, I noticed an attractive, well-dressed lady sitting in the front row, only a few feet from where I stood, nodding her head in agreement as I made point after point. She seemed to be completely oblivious to her surroundings, listening with rapt attention, which was very flattering to me as the speaker. As I continued she entered more deeply into the spirit of my talk, leaning forward on her chair with her mouth slightly open. Having explained that the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the tree of death because the fruit of such a belief is fear, I said:

"If we are not careful we will often eat apples of fear and then wonder why we have so many tummy aches in life."

At that point the lady arose and with great feeling and a refreshing abandon, cried out, "That's me all over, sister!"

It nearly broke up our meeting, though I was sure at the time that everyone there admired her as much as I did. Later, the lady—I like to think of her as Edna Rigger—came to my hotel to apologize for interrupting me. I assured her I was not annoyed, but pleased and proud of her. She had the look of the American pioneer woman, her feet solidly on the ground and an uncompromising determination in her honest blue eyes. But also, she obviously was deeply troubled.

"What have you found that is bigger than God?" I asked.

"Look," she replied, handing me a colored post-card picture of the Sir Joseph Hooker Oak, which stands in Bidwell Park, in Chico, California. "My tree of good and evil is as big as this tree and full of fruit! I'm blood sister to Eve," said Edna. "I just gorge myself on those apples of fear. How can I destroy the root of such a big tree with the amount of faith I have? It would be like trying to dig out Hooker Oak with a penknife. That's the size of my faith—penknife size."

I studied the card and read the description of that famous landmark and learned the oak was then estimated to be more than a thousand years old; that it rose to more than one hundred feet in the air and had a trunk circumference of almost thirty feet. Its branches spread over an area of one hundred and fifty feet in diameter.

"I hope your tree of fear is not that big," I said.

"Bigger," Edna assured me. "And if you count every leaf on that tree as one of the fruits of fear I have been eating all my life you'll get a picture of how things are with me and my family. How can I destroy my tree of fear with my little old penknife faith?"

"By learning new truths and living them," I said. "By getting a purpose in life so big and so important that it will overcome fear. You can walk away from the tree and go eat of the tree of life. What is your greatest fear of the moment?" I asked.

"Something wrong with my youngest child, Billy Boy. Few weeks ago he began to cry at the breakfast table. We asked him what was wrong. He said, 'I don't want to grow up. There are too many bad things to happen to people.' I took him to the doctor who said there was nothing wrong with him except too many horror movies on Saturday and being batted to pieces by our crazy home life.

Billy is sensitive. Doctor said he needed an awful lot of love. That's when I decided I had to learn something. Things have got to change!" she declared so firmly that I knew she would follow through on a self-help program and agreed to try to help her.

Thus began our work together, carried on by mail later. Edna's written story of her life opened as follows:
"I was conceived in fear and borne in dread, neither needed, wanted nor loved as a child. There were so many of us little brats that life was too much for poor mother and she was an invalid most of the time. Father was an alcoholic when he was out of jail. We lived on hand-me-downs and grudged money."

Edna included her fears of growing up, struggling for a modest education, the jobs she held, the people in her life and her "big deep plunge" into marriage.

"I think we love each other," Edna wrote, "but to this day I am uncomfortable in Rodney's presence and especially if his parents or college friends are with us. He then says and does things that hurt me and make me feel like a country clod which I guess I am."

Edna's husband, Rodney, was a college man, and a registered pharmacist. They had four children aged six to sixteen. Edna gave me vivid word pictures of her problems. Her husband was too critical of her and the children. The children quarreled with one another. Two years before, their combined fears of the future and rising living costs, had driven Edna from home into the commercial world. "I think my husband has been angry every hour since," she wrote. Associates where she worked were problem people. A good many of them got in her hair. Her story ended with:

"We are good people, pay our bills, don't drink or smoke or gamble. We don't steal or lie or cheat on each other and we go to church on Easter, Christmas and Mother's Day. On the surface we are an average happy family, but the truth is our home life is just plain hell!"

"You can remodel your home life from hell, which is in harmony, into a heaven of happiness and harmony" I told her.

Edna was willing to try. "But please give me something to read and follow," she requested, "something that will make me stop and think which tree I am eating from, and in time."

From her report to me Edna's case looked like this:

1. Her problem was unhappiness in the family. She felt they were all drifting with no purpose in life but just to live from day to day. The two older children were almost out of hand and straining to get out of the unpleasant home.

2. Edna's fears were: Things would always be this way or worse; that she was powerless to change them; the situation was hopeless; no help to be had.

3. Her basic false belief about life which gave rise to the fears was that God exists, but man cannot know Him or contact Him. There was no help to be had from prayer; if no help now, then none later, after death. While that part was subconscious it had its effect in her daily life.
 
She feared she was missing her only chance of happiness. She feared she was not a very good wife or mother.

4. The results of Edna's false basic belief and fears were that she felt unloved, that life was "just too hard," and not worth the living.

The crisis that drove Edna to seek help and to hope there was help to be had, was hearing her child voice her own often secretly held thought: life is not worth living. And, as I told her, without God's love for man, without God's plan for man, without the privilege and power of prayer, without love given and received, life indeed would not be worth living.

Edna's problems with her husband, children, other people at work, and in-laws all had to do with love. Edna had a tremendous capacity for love and wanted to express it fully and to receive it fully. That was her nature. This urge of her nature was in conflict with her belief about God and so, all life, including her husband and children and herself. She was afraid to love fully for fear of rejection and often felt there was rejection when there was not. Thus her fears set up repressed angers. Repressed anger can completely destroy married happiness and sex life. Also, Edna's unhappy memories of childhood often stood in the way of her present living.

"You are a very strong character, a potential leader," I told Edna. "Your family will believe as you do. You must learn to love fully, without any fear whatever. Remember, all those silent angers are defenses against fear. You must learn to love without fear."

Edna set out to change the conditions from what they were to what she wanted them to be. Her goal: a happy, fear-free home life. Always we must start right where we are with what we have. Instead of waiting for lessons and further learning, Edna set to work at once with my first suggestion. Mealtimes had been noisy, unhappy affairs filled with tension that frequently exploded into temper tantrums. Edna had come to dread them. I advised her to invite the Spirit of Love to be her guest one evening. I told her the names of some of the children of love are Courtesy, Kindness, Patience, and Calmness.

Edna set an extra plate at the table that night. The children wanted to know "Why do we have to have someone tonight, Mom?" Each had something he wanted to talk over with her. Her husband growled, "Well, I hope she's on time. I'm hungry."
"Our guest is already here," said Edna. "And she will not mind if we all just plow in and eat and grunt like pigs and quarrel and bicker. Our unseen guest here is the Spirit of Love."

Her words were greeted with embarrassment at first. Then Edna said, "While the roast gets another ten minutes, I want you all to be quiet while I read to you." She then read Paul's words on love.

I hope the reader will turn to his Bible and read the entire thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, the most inspiring words about love ever put into language. It begins:

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity (love), I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal."

"We could do with less brass and more of love around here," said Edna as she put the Bible down.

In the quiet that followed Edna announced that after dinner she wanted all of them to write out a list of what they'd like to have changed in their family life; what each one feared most. Her idea was accepted with interest. All during dinner Edna kept the children quiet by lifting a forefinger to her mouth, and looking at the offending one she then pointed toward the vacant seat where sat the invisible Spirit of Love.

Afterward her husband said, "That dinner without brass was the most peaceful meal we've had in a long time. I sure appreciate it."

After dinner the children wrote out their fears and what they wanted changed. Billy Boy's fear was that "every time Mommy goes to work I'm afraid she will not come back again."

The teen-agers were afraid to bring friends home. The pre-teen was afraid he would never make good in school. Edna's husband feared he never could earn enough money to give Edna and the children all he wanted them to have, which surprised and pleased Edna. "But I didn't let him know I was pleased," she said. Edna had for so long held back her natural impulses of love expressions that she often withheld praise and encouragement that needed to be given. Fear of rejection, or of not being understood kept her silent.

"To withhold praise and expressions of love where needed and deserved can be cruelty," I told Edna. "No one ever received too much love."

Some of the points of truth Edna learned and put to use were:

Practicing the awareness of God's love.

This was done by working with her children. "You do your best for them because you love them and because you are by nature a love person," I said. "Where did the love in your heart come from? If it did not come from God, Creator, giver of life, then where did you get it? Take time to think about your joy in giving and doing for your family for this takes you back to God, the source of love."

Love is a growing part of the human Soul.

Edna learned that love is a growing part of the human Soul and that not much was heard of love before the coming of Christ. In the Old Testament we learn there were 614 rules in the Pentateuch which were broken on pain of punishment. Moses caught a man picking up sticks on the Sabbath and he was taken outside the city gates and stoned to death. That is as far as understanding of God's nature and laws had developed at that time with those people.

But, as time went on, and the Soul of man, the individual and so the race, developed we find man's ideas of love increasing. In the fifteenth Psalm we find those rigid 614 rules reduced to eleven. Eventually in the Prophets we find them reduced to three: "Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God." Finally came Jesus the Christ who reduced all the laws to one: the law of love.

Of all the fears which beset humanity none is more painful than those having to do with love, for love is a twelve-sided affair and we deal with it in some way every hour of our lives. Since we are all born hungry for love it will help us to overcome all our fears to understand the needs of love. Let us take a look at those twelve sides of love:

In group one we need status with God which has jour parts as follows:

1. We need to know God loves us.

2. We need to love God with happiness, praise and gratitude.

3. We need to know God accepts our love, even when we do wrong.

4. We need to know we are worthy of God's love even when we do wrong deliberately or make mistakes ignorantly.

In group two we need status with other people:

1. We need to know others love us; to feel acceptable.

2. We need to know we are worthy of the love of others.

3. We need to love others; to value them.

4. We need to have others value us and accept our love.

In group three we need status with Self:

1. We need to be a lovable person, a Self, good company alone.

2. We need to know we are upright, have a clear conscience.

3. We need to be satisfied that we are doing somewhere near our best in life, making a worth while contribution.

4. We need to love ourselves even when we fail utterly, or fall short of our high ideals and objectives and regardless of what others may or may not think of us and what we believe God expects of us.

Edna needed to know all the twelve sides of love. For the child who feels he is not loved, wanted or needed is a problem child. He will remain a problem person all his life until he satisfies at least some of his total hunger for love. Not to have love gives him nameless fears all his life. I have worked with men and women past sixty-five years of age who were still seeking some of the needs of love that never had been met.

Edna could not at first believe that her husband also had fears and needed a great deal of encouragement, love and praise from her. I told her, "Love is a woman's work. Don't slight it, ever." And when she began to "take the initiative and tell Rodney I loved him and to become interested in his work and problems, I found he did need and appreciate my help. I decided I would not wait for him to say he loved me. I would just take that for granted. I could say I loved him, and say it first. It has paid off handsomely," she wrote. "And now we talk everything over and my silent angers have all gone."

Soon after her studies began Edna decided they could get along without her "working-for-money job" and announced she would stay home and do a better job there. The whole family improved from the first day.

Edna found it difficult to believe she was an attractive woman. I had her stand in front of her mirror every day and say: "Wonderful, beautiful, precious you!" It helped her a great deal. She eventually could evaluate her good qualities and accepted the fact that she was a success as a woman.
As Edna changed her opinion of herself, she discovered her husband showed a new respect and admiration for her. The charming person is one who is not afraid of tomorrow; and who has a faith he can rely on in any situation in life. Edna's self-respect went on to feeling worthy of God's love, to love of others as well as of her family. She became a charming and poised person. Living and loving without fear she "began to enjoy being married and being a wife and to feel she really was making the grade at last."

Edna found that by being home they cut the doctor bills to almost nothing. She stopped eating out so much. "We had been running away from our unhappy home life," she said. They never missed her salary. "Rodney is happier than he ever has been in our married life," she wrote joyfully.

Edna put up a hand-made placard in the dining room which read: Love Is the Head of This House. When one of the children misbehaved she would say, "The Head of the House is watching you," and the child would quiet down. When she felt fear or resentment toward her husband she remembered "the head of the House."

As time went on Edna solved problems as they arose by saying to herself and teaching her family:

Through love, God created man to have a Being in His own image and likeness to love, to watch over and to help to develop toward some goal we do not yet understand. But it is good. Since God's love was big enough to create man it is big enough to care for all of us right now. But Edna, being the wonderful direct and forceful love person that she was, finally cut the idea to one sentence. She would hold in her mind the fact that there is nothing bigger than God's love for His children. She would say aloud to herself or family, "There's nothing bigger than God!" without ever discussing the problem. It became a family byword.

Edna wrote: "Every time I forget and start to fear evil, the whole family reacts. Life says to me, you name it Edna, and I'll bring it."

That is what it says to all of us, and has been saying to man since the dawn of civilization, or the coming of man's free will.

Many times Edna wrote, "I slipped again, but I'll never give up." She had come to realize that the good we desire today has an eternal value for us. Her husband joined a church with her "after he saw how much good it was doing the children and me," she wrote. And he eventually went into business for himself because Edna, who had learned to take the initiative, first saw the way and he happily followed her ideas. Today they own a prosperous drugstore business. My last letter from them said "We still belong to the happy throng." It was signed with their name and "Dwellers in Paradise."

If your problem has to do with love you will find much help in the succeeding chapters. Meantime here are several points:

1. You are not alone, not unloved. God had need of you or you would not be here. Fulfill that need and love will come and fear will go.

2. What we call evil is a wrong use of our good, God given power. God our Creator continues to create through us his offspring. We create at a low general level, every time we think. We create at a higher level when we picture what we desire. We create at the highest level when we picture with a purpose and speak the word for it. It is because we do have this power that we need have no fear of anything outside of ourselves.

Step four in overcoming fear is: set a purpose in life.

Be sure to set one that is of tremendous importance to you. Let it mean almost as much as life itself. Work under love at that purpose and no fear can touch you. This was what Edna Rigger did as we have seen in this chapter.

Also: remember to keep up with the world picture of love at work. World fear goes as worldwide love comes in. A recent scientific discovery sets the date of man on earth at 1,750,000 years. We can be pretty certain that fear of one human being for another is also that old. We will stop our wars, murders, hatreds and suspicions when enough people understand themselves and their neighbors and God. Only then can they conduct their affairs of life within the golden rule so that we can have worldwide, permanent peace, plenty, happiness and freedom from fear. Thousands of efforts are being made on this front. For example:

1. The exchange student program is now so well established that it probably will continue for generations until the peoples of one country know a great deal about those of another. As walls of ignorance are broken down, fear and suspicion go and love comes in.

2. We now have 200,000,000 Christians in the world. The number is growing rapidly. This is most hopeful for a world free of fear. For "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." (II Corinthians 3:17 R.S.V.)

3. Dr. Ernest M. Ligon, Director of Character Research Projects of Union College, recently said: "If even a quarter of the money spent during the last decade on luxurious church school buildings had been invested in
research, the dividends in terms of the fruits of faith, would have been a hundredfold greater. The awakening urge for research in religious education, which is being seen on every hand, must be nourished and made to grow into the force it can become."

Everywhere we look, intelligent men and women are at work to help people to understand people. For when understanding comes, fear goes. But we must always come back to ourselves and see that we overcome our own fears. Until we do the fearless world around us will not help us much. So let us go on with our lessons.

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