(Hello from Johannesburg, South Africa!)
I’ve been penning this blog in my head for five months now. I guess, in a way, I wanted to make sure it was real. That God actually, miraculously me. But now, as we prepare for our flights to Asia, I write of God’s power excitedly.
Crippling fears used to control my life. For years I let the fear of the unknown, the fear of dying, the fear of rape, kidnapping, or murder, and the fear of plane crashes absolutely rule my life.
On our flights to and from Hawai’i right before the Race, I sat next to my aunt, who was completely calm, while my mind literally pictured the plane going down. She reminded me that she barely felt the bumpy ride, while I decided we’d crash over the ocean at any given second. She related it to our walks with the Lord, how she’s grown to know and trust His character over the years, knowing that He’ll take care of her, and so she’s calm during the bumps along the way. That was my first hint that my intense fear of flying was going to be a big metaphor for life on the Race.
The time I really realized how crazy this lesson was going to be was on our flight from Miami to Quito, Ecuador for Launch Week. The girls told me something like, “Stephanie, don’t freak out. You know God is going to take care of you.” And my immediate response was, “Well, then why did He let my mom die?” It was one of those moments where you shake your head, blink really hard, and pull back, like, “Wait, what just came out of my mouth?” I had no idea how my deep set fears went back to my mother’s death, 12 years prior.
You see, I’m not sure I ever truly grieved my mom’s death. I came to terms with the fact that she’d never be at my graduations and wedding, but I didn’t realize how it affected my view of God’s goodness. I realized on that flight that this year, God wanted to restore my view of Himself.
Fast forward three months. I had lived in fear all of South America. Fear of violence and “the bottom dropping out”, and fear, knowing that I had to get on a plane again soon. Our itinerary from South America to Europe included 5 flights from 6 cities and 3 continents: La Paz, Santa Cruz, Miami, New York, Istanbul, and Tirana. Over 20 hours in the air.
During my time in South America that I had tried with all my heart to never be scared anymore. But I had tried to logically erase my illogical fears. A friend reminded me that sometimes we can only overcome one emotion by replacing it with another emotion. We only have room for one at a time. In my case, it would be replacing fear with love. PERFECT LOVE CASTS OUT ALL FEAR.
(A picture our teammate took on the flight I’m about to talk about…)
As God would have it, on our first flight, I was sitting by strangers for the entire hour, and had no one to calm me down. I had to turn to God. As was tradition by this point, I broke the rules and listened to my iPod during taxi and take-off. I began listening to the song, “How He Loves”, by Jesus Culture.
As we taxied down the runway, I tried to let the words, “How He loves us, oh how He loves us…” sink into my heart. God wasn’t some big scary, impersonal, power in the sky, waiting for me to do something wrong, or letting “the bottom drop out” to teach me a lesson. He desperately, passionately, loves Stephanie Christine Bernotas.
In this version of this song, there is a prayer.
You can listen to the song below. The prayer is about 3/4’s of the way in. She talks about how deeply God loves all of us; how His love is so thick, so unending. And how we all need to experience a true love encounter with Him. And when we do, we’ll be changed, and never be the same again. So we better just brace ourselves, because we’re about to experience a love encounter with Him.
As she was saying, “So you better just BRACE YOURSELF…” the plane took off. God timed it perfectly. As if telling me, plain and simple, that this plane ride would be a love encounter with Him, for which I had to brace myself. And oh, how that flight was a love encounter. I can’t explain it, but God loved on me so well during that hour. Just me and Him, in the sky, trusting Him with my life all over again, letting His love affect the deep recesses of my heart. My fears. My past hurts. My anger at Him for letting my mom die. My fear of flying, which is a giant metaphor for my life. It felt like my heart was blown open, and God finally had the chance to go deep. To heal the depths of my heart. To love on me. To change me permanently. To rid me of fear for good.
I ran off the plane, pulled over all of my friends, and told them how God healed me of my fear of flying, and of fear in general. For the next four flights, I enjoyed looking out the window, didn’t mind flying through a storm, and experienced the freedom and love of God at a whole new level.
Since then, it has been a continual journey of letting God heal me of all my other fears. I no longer have to sleep with windows and doors locked and I no longer “foreshadow” disaster. I know I seem like I was a crazy person, and I sort of was. That’s why any effort from myself or others couldn’t change it. God had to heal me. Sure, like any normal person, in an actually scary situation, I’ll be scared. And no, I don’t go around doing things that are stupid, like wandering alone in the third world. I’m still smart, but I slept in peace in unguarded tents for a month. I fly without a care. I’m healed.
If I had tried to let Him heal me of my fears while I was living in safety, the “healing” would have been surface level. He needed to heal me while I was in the air, in, what was in my mind the most perilous of situations. Where I literally had no control over whether I lived or died. Powerless. Terrified. That was when my heart was ripped open enough for God to enter and heal.
So, like the prayer said, if there’s healing that the Lord needs to do in you, stop striving for that. Let Him bring you in to a love encounter with Him. A love encounter where He gets access to and heals the deep recesses of your hearts. A love encounter where you’re never the same again.
Oh, how He loves us!
I loved your blog. Thanks for openly sharing what God is teaching you. It actually made me cry reading it because I could relate to having a lot of crippling fear in my own life and so much of what I learned on the race was letting God love me.. starting to really believe his love and goodness as he brought healing to me. and that has really freed me from a lot of fears. And I still struggle with irrational fears from time to time but its much easier to fight now because I learned to take my thoughts captive to the Lordship of Christ and just trust with all of my heart. I think the Lord is very intentional about revealing our deepest hurts so He can heal them and bring restoration…and since the WR typically shakes you to the core (at one or several points) it provides this framework in which the Lord can really work. I’m excited to read about your new freedom from fear and I pray that will experience even more intimacy and love of the Lord.
An amazing testimony of the LORD’s great love for his children……
Steph, seeing how God works deeply & powerfully in your life reminds me that He still wants to do that in mine — even in the midst of a semester of what feel like all-consuming [student teaching + thesis-writing + work + grief] with not a whole lot of time for anything else. The truth that the God who digs deep in your life & transforms you is the SAME GOD who wants to dig deep in the lives of all His children (including me) refocuses me enough to re-resolve to trust Him to not let everything fall to pieces when I take time off to tear myself away from my “must-do”s & spend patient and vulnerable time with Him.
Your blog is a blessing, and a ministry here while you’re a bazillion miles away. Even as you’re so caught up in His work on other continents, He yet uses you as part of His big work He’s doing back here. He’s so good.
Love you.
Wonderful gift from the Lord to you Steph … and also to know when it happened, so you can recall His personal message to you in the weak moments. Perfect love casts out all fear. Oh Lord, give us Your perfect love! AMEN
Well Stephanie, this answers our questions about you being well rested. We were confused as we know you weren’t sleeping. How AWESOME is our Lord to have healed you in this way – using your fears to teach you about so many different things. The Love of the Lord and His wonderful ways of working our weaknesses to teach us to be more dependent on Him brings feelings of love and trust more than we could have ever imagined. I Praise the Lord that you are learning this at a young age, as it willl guide you to a life serving Him through obedience that will ultimately bring you Joy in all you do!!!
Can’t wait to hear more details of your healing and how you will use it to help others!!
I continue to pray daily for you and your team!!
Love in Christ,
Traci
Dearest Stephanie – thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you for your continual obedience to the Lord as you surrender to Him and as you write these incredible blogs! I know I haven’t commented much, but I’ve read everything you’ve written and prayed for you daily. Not only are you changing the lives of people in the many countries you’ve traveled, but please know that your ministry is powerfully affecting many of us at home. I’m speaking from personal experience because you are ministering like crazy to me! The Lord spoke to me while reading your blog regarding the fear I am still burdened with, as well as the “why’s” I haven’t given over to Him. And that song! WOW! Thanks again for being so transparent and vulnerable – like a mirror revealing my insecurities and weaknesses. You are a blessing to me, Steph.
Steph,
We all have to deal with our fears! I used to also be afraid of flying, I’d pray that it would not be the pilot’s ‘time’! Hearing some of the strange noises the plane engine made and when there would be one of those ‘drops’ in altitude and I’d freak! We were flying to South Africa through those pre-hurricane storms for 27 hours, I realized that I was either in the Lord’s hands or I wasn’t….I trusted and we landed in Jo’burg safe and sound. We went during apartheid and their ‘state of emergency’ time and we (whites) stayed in coloured homes (a HUGE no no!)..we had car bombs, death threats, my friends called me stupid for going at that time. I realized that if it was my ‘time’, I could just as easily be hit by a truck in front of my house. The Lord wanted me there and I was in his hands no matter what. I saw what he did, and he is LORD!! No matter what, we can have the peace, as his love is perfect and you know what it casts out!! Your blogs have been a teacher to me and I realize that God has SUCH a purpose for you….once a lonely little girl who lost her Mom, but look what God has done. When you were 11 and crying your eyes out, did you ever think he’d do in your life what he’s doing now? You go Girl!!
Love and prayers, Susan
Dear Steph,
What a wonderful testimony to the love and power of God, and to the truth in scripture: “Perfect Love casts out all fear.” How encouraging it has been to watch what the Lord is doing in you and in your life. Sometimes it takes seeing it in someone else’s life to encourage me to hang on for what He is and will do in mine. I don’t for one minute compare my world race with yours, but I do feel like I’m on one — and for me it’s very scary at times. But, reading your blogs always reminds me that I can still serve God in the midst of my fears, trusting that He will deliver me from each fear — in His time and in just the right circumstances, and “How He Loves” me enough to never leave me or forsake me (or give up on me).
I have thought a lot about your mom as you have been on this race — wondering about the fears she might have had in sending you off on such a mission. But she would be so proud of you and willing to trust her God with your life. Now, from heaven, she surely knows just how in control God is!
Thank you for all that you share with us — changing our perspective on the day we’ve had and the lives we lead, sometimes in as little as three sentences.
“Blessed is the [woman] who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. [She] will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:7-8)
With love,
Angela
Dear Stephanie, thank you for being so transparent in sharing your fears. I am 72, and have many fears also. Your blog and the sharing of the others is going to help me to get with it and work with the Lord to get rid of mine. Thank you so much. Love, Peg
Steph, I just cried so much reading this. I have seen those fears you talked about be acted out in your life and I really praise God that He has healed you and is freeing you more each day to live in His love. This makes me long for the day I get to see you face-to-face again and hear all the stories of what God is doing with you across the world, and to see the new Stephanie, a freed Stephanie living in the present. I miss you so much, friend, and I cannot wait to hug you when we both get back.
with too much love to adequately express,
Rach
Thanks Stephanie for sharing your heart. It has nudged me to examine mine.