Fear’s Greatest Enemy

2020 has been a great year for me. I know that sentence is odd to read- it felt weird and slightly wrong to type. But it has been.

My (at the time) girlfriend Maya moved to Charlotte and started an internship in the beginning of 2020. Maya and I got engaged in March 2020. As Covid made doing things outside the house nearly impossible, I got to spend an incredible amount of time with my family. And my family got to spend more time with Maya than they ever would have in a “normal” year. Then, in July 2020, I got married. Now, Maya and I both serve at the same church. Many of the most pivotal, significant moments in my life happened in 2020. For that reason, 2020 has been a profoundly good year.

I write that knowing that 2020 has been a hard year for many. I don’t mean to diminish that. I just want to set the scene for the rest of the piece.

Marriage has been, to me, a greater blessing than I even imagined it would be. There is an experience of love, care and closeness that I’ve never had before. There’s a level of being known and knowing of the other person that is incomparable. 2020 has provided incredible blessing.

But, in the middle of all this blessing, to be uncomfortably transparent, I’ve never experienced more fear than I have this year. I had a roughly 3 week period before, during and directly after our wedding where I felt…