Trepidation

trep . i . da . tion /noun/ fear, apprehension, dread, worry, anxiety, nervousness uneasiness

As you can see from the definitions above, trepidation has multiple denotative meanings, and it also has  as many connotative ones as there are people. Two of the meanings, fear and anxiety,  can have really severe consequences. Fear has the power to be crippling; anxiety can be incapacitating as psychologists and psychiatrists will attest, but these  intense effects are not the focus of this week’s comments. Trepidation applies to our daily experiences in other ways.

Yesterday I saw the first yellow school bus that heralded the new school year, and my thoughts ran to the children who had got on the bus that morning– those returning to school and those going for the first time. Going to school for the first time is an undertaking fraught with trepidation, especially if you are four or five years old.  The little ones see big problems ahead of them; unsurmountable obstacles loom without mom and dad there to help them. From their perspective, life looks  frightening. Happily for most of them, the situation takes on a brighter outlook within a few days.

The first-day  fear isn’t limited to elementary school children. Those going to high school from middle school  have nail-biting, anxious moments  of  worry about how they will navigate the new landscape of gym classes, moving from one classroom to another several times a day and perhaps confronting bullies in the hallway, and getting along with hundreds of people they don’t know. Sometimes, for some of them the trepidation turns out to be justified.

And what about the college students?  A large number of them  embark on their first day of classes with their own share of apprehension. It’s written all over their faces. When I first stand before my allotted 25, my job is to make them feel comfortable, welcome, accepted. But I can feel the anxiety, the tentativeness as their eyes focus on me wonderingly. Is she hard? Is she mean? Will I be able to talk to  her? And the question that causes the most stress is Will I pass the class? The eyes have it. I can’t see their trembling knees or their trembling faith, but I can see their eyes. Time erases the trepidation.

Trepidation is an equal opportunity emotion, so the teachers are not exempt from the initial uneasiness at the start of the school year.  They have questions. Will I be able to do the job effectively? Will I meet their needs and help them succeed?  Please, God, don’t let me cause any of them to become discouraged or confused. I pray for my own pedagogical skills to be reinforced with creative delivery strategies  that will reach each eagerly waiting,  open mind.

Trepidation is fear. Which one of us has not felt this emotion?  It seems part of our nature to be nervous at the start of any new or major endeavor. For instance, the first day on a new job causes the stomach to churn uncontrollably. Preparing for surgery or waiting for lab results awakens our fears. Starting out on a cross-country move to a new city can do it to us also. I have a dear friend whose trepidation sets in long before a scheduled flight, especially if there is the likelihood of turbulence. For me, it happens when I am getting ready for a book signing or a talk; I feel the ripples in my stomach  right up until the moment when I begin. Then as soon as I start, they fall away like slain Goliaths. I have heard actors say that some nervousness before a performance is good. It helps to bring out the best in them when they go out on stage.

The opposite of anxiety is calmness. Thankfully, we do not all experience trepidation at the same time. That would make our world even more unpleasant  and confusing than it is. Those who know how to stay  calm under pressing circumstances owe it to the ones that are fearful to help them become calm and unperturbed even in situations that call for being jittery.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s words in his first inaugural address have become famous: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” This is a profound statement. Too often we allow our fear to magnify a situation, but most times it turns out that  the thing we fear never happens. After we have bitten our nails and sweated and found that nothing harmful came of the dreaded event, we come to realize that we have expended a lot of emotional energy for no good reason. We simply feared fear. I came across some words on the fly leaf in one of my books and wish I had written the full name of the person who said it or wrote it so that I could give proper credit, because it expresses a truth that I find worth pondering. “Being fearful is as bad as we think it is,” the quotation says.  Our minds control our feelings.  If we think fear, then the situation we are facing becomes something to be feared.

A contrasting word to trepidation is intrepid, which means fearless, undaunted, bold. I think of my ninety-year-old friend who is as vigorous and intrepid as women many years her junior.  I called her overseas sometime ago and had a long talk with her. She is a former missionary to African and the retired nurse in a high school. She had no words of fear  about the onset of later years and what they might bring. She told me about her involvements and activities and encouraged me to continue mine.

I read somewhere that Rick Warren, the author of The Purpose Driven Life, has said that “God encourages His followers to fear not 365 times in the Bible, one for each day in the year.”  I don’t know whether there are actually 365 fear-nots, but I know about quite a number of them, and they are great for calming the anxiety we feel when we face one of our mountains. With a lot of “fear thou-nots” to depend on, there is no need for us to spend even one moment of our day worrying.

Blessings,

Judith

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“Fear thou not for I am with thee” (Isaiah 41:10).