All Saints Day II — When They Became Smaller

The Quiet Deliverance from Fear

I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me out of all my terror. 

— Psalm 34:4

When we remember the saints, we often think of their visible accomplishments: courageous acts of faith, extraordinary service, remarkable sacrifices, and lives that inspired generations of believers. But I wonder how many of their most important spiritual victories occurred where no one else could see them. How many struggled privately with fear, insecurity, or the need for approval? How many experienced transformations that were barely noticeable to the people around them? In Psalm 34, the psalmist offers a wonderfully personal testimony: “I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me out of all my terror.” What does such deliverance actually look like? Does God suddenly remove every frightening circumstance from our lives? Does he transform us into people who never experience anxiety again? I don't think we should assume either. Sometimes deliverance takes place so quietly, and so deeply within us, that the people around us may scarcely realize anything has happened.

For much of my life, I struggled with what we commonly call people-pleasing. Even my daughters have observed that I sometimes allow people to take advantage of me. I had a rather noble-sounding explanation for my behavior. Other people have enough problems of their own, I reasoned. I'll be the person who doesn't add to their stress. I'll remain calm and collected, let them vent, accommodate their needs, and make myself as easy to get along with as possible. And there is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to be a peaceful, considerate presence in the lives of others. But eventually I began to recognize that something else was happening beneath the surface. What I had presented as generosity was sometimes a mask for insecurity. I wasn't always accommodating people because I freely chose to love them. Sometimes I was accommodating them because I was afraid not to.

That distinction took time to understand. I could appear calm and agreeable while privately feeling intimidated, resentful, or even angry with people to whom I had spent years deferring. I sometimes allowed others to exercise a kind of authority over my emotional life that they had never actually been entitled to possess. And then I would resent them for having that power! Eventually, through a process of honest self-examination and spiritual growth, I began naming these attitudes for what they were. I started recognizing that genuine strength didn't require me to become domineering, argumentative, or insensitive. I could remain kind and considerate while also being confident, competent, and willing to stand my ground. The remarkable thing was that this transformation began almost entirely within my own spirit. There was no dramatic confrontation, no public declaration of independence, and no sudden change in the people around me.

But I remember a time, somewhere along that journey, when something extraordinary happened. People I had spent much of my life deferring to suddenly seemed smaller. I mean that almost literally. They appeared smaller to me! Not because I had become superior to them, or because they had somehow lost their importance or dignity. They simply seemed closer to their actual size. The intimidating stature I had unconsciously assigned to them was beginning to disappear. I found myself speaking more confidently, making decisions more comfortably, and interacting with people without the familiar need to retreat or surrender my judgment. And as I began behaving differently, I sensed that others were responding to me differently as well. I'm not even sure they knew anything was happening. I hadn't become bigger than anyone else. I had simply stopped making myself smaller.

When I read Psalm 34, I think about that experience. The psalmist declares that God delivered him from his terror, but the verse doesn't tell us that every source of danger or intimidation disappeared. The deliverance he celebrates is something that happened to him, something that changed his experience of fear. I don't mean to suggest that every person struggling with anxiety can simply decide to become more confident, or that spiritual growth automatically resolves the effects of trauma. I know better from my own experience. But I also know that genuine freedom can emerge gradually, sometimes through changes that are invisible to everyone except the person experiencing them. And I have come to recognize that Christian humility does not require self-erasure. If I believe that other people possess dignity because they are created and loved by God, then I must acknowledge that the same is true of me. Loving my neighbor does not require pretending that my own needs, convictions, and boundaries are unimportant.

In our first All Saints reflection, we considered those whose family lines ended without descendants, and whose names and stories might eventually disappear from human memory. Today, I find myself thinking about another kind of hidden story: the quiet victories within people's lives that may never have been recognized at all. A timid person learned to speak with conviction. Someone desperate for approval discovered the freedom to say no. Someone accustomed to being intimidated began to recognize that the people around them were simply fellow human beings, no greater or lesser in dignity than themselves. Such victories may never appear in a biography or be commemorated in a stained-glass window. But they matter. And perhaps All Saints Day is an occasion to remember that God knows not only the lives that history has forgotten, but also the inward journeys that even our closest companions may never fully understand. I have not become fearless, and my journey is certainly not finished. But I have become freer. And that is a deliverance for which I can give thanks.

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