What does Fear have to do with Being Loved First?

It’s been an interesting morning. The layers and the context are drags in the mud, so will spare you. But here I am now with my “All Time Favorite Songs” playing in the background, in front of a window, wearing my new earrings from Old San Juan that are bright poppy reddish pink and match the friendship bracelet necklace I made in St. Croix. I mean… to complain about the layers and the muddy context would be to take away from the very real fact that I have no real problem right here and right now.

An Art Fair to be present at this weekend? Yes.

A prenatal training to be present for this weekend? Yes.

Three yoga and restorative yoga classes to intelligently prepare for in the next three days? Yes.

And whether it is the mission to support women out of my yoga clubhouse and studio community or my priority to feed my spirit so that my words can be fully owned by God that is causing my present moment to be so super charged, I can’t help but release the very real to do list for full present moment alignment.

I have marketing work and sales work and this constant (fear?) stress that if only I tried a little harder, focused a little more – this time around would be less experimental and more impactful. I don’t feel as prepared for the Art Fair as I thought I might be. There are some loose threads around the prenatal training that I thought I would have more tightly woven together.

But I also have this very real trust that things are always as they should be. That if I am focused on how I feel and what my body needs that the natural care for others, my family, my presence all will align correctly.

In the background of this processing is a trunk full of all of my notebooks. This trunk has been organized in two notable times. One was my “bachelorette party”… The weekend before I left for the Pacific Northwest to marry David, I spent with with all the notebooks out on the table – going through the chapters, looking back on my story, putting them in order, ripping out the loose stuff, keeping the good stuff. I spent that weekend with coffee and my past and my thoughts. It was a different kind of hangover than other brides to be might have – it was a 2020 solo rerun and it was awesome.

The second time I went through the notebooks was a bit more recent. In an rare wind I caught before Christmas time in 2025. I started pulling together all the everything in the house and took over the basement. All the poetry in one corner… All the fiction in another… the planners that have the kind of life artifact scribbles “planes hit the twin towers today”… that just hold *history* in a stack of their own.

So now, as I prepare for a chapter of a new found dedication to my mental health and that dedication supporting me telling my story, it’s time to take another look through the trunk (especially as it has gotten just a little overflowing with things…)

BUT HOW.

I decided to close my eyes and pick three things and one of those things was my Grandma’s Devotional Book… today’s verse was 1 John 4:18 and I found something particularly helpful to today.

““In love there can be no fear – but fear is driven out by perfect love: because to fear is to expect punishment – so anyone is afraid is imperfect in love. We are to love, because we are loved by God first.”

I am finding myself playing with the idea that if perfect love drives out fear, and fear expects punishment – then anytime we start anticipating being left or being hurt or doing something wrong and having to deal with a consequence we don’t want, that we are forgetting we were loved by God first.

That in all of the things I have to do for the business and for the home, that all of the things on my heart and mind for my relationships – that the pressure I start to feel is because of an expectation I believe is on me that I must meet (or what?!) or because of a consequence I want to avoid (is it even real?) but that the mode of operation that I have always found to work: how do I feel / what does my body need / align from there – is really a quality idea because it is rooted in the fact I am loved by God first.

Understanding my body as sacred technology, that the emotions and energy I have can be cleared / charged / balanced – and that from this place, I can access creativity and access connection, to do my best work (come what may)… is to understand I am here because I am loved and because I am love and from that place, I can love.

Noticing fear of consequence, of failing, of expectation is to be invited into the love that is your birthright.

It is quite powerful of a realization, ya know. And so … from this point … I think it is time for another coffee (more on my coffee regimine sometime) and some direct sunlight.