Facing One's Fears

II Timothy 1:17 KJV "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind"
Hebrews 11:1 KJV "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"

This is not SCRIPTURE, however I also like this one:

"Faith is the bird that feels the light, and sings while the dawn is yet dark"

I have always been taught and believe that the word "FAITH" requires action. The scriptures tell us that "Faith without works is dead" James 2:20

Faith and fear cannot really stand together. If you are fearful, then faith is lacking and if you have faith, then fear must flee.

I am AFRAID of heights. It was not always so. As a kid, I used to regularly climb the 30 feet high pines trees on our property; going higher, and higher, from limb to limb, and swaying the top of the tree back and forth. All of this of course was long before safety belts and harnesses were part of my volcabulary. I also used to stand at the the top of an open top 30 foot plus silo and look down with no sense of fear, or feeling like I was being pulled over the edge by some mysterious unidentifiable force. In fact, it was an incident involving the building of a new silo on a farm I used to work on, which first instilled in me a "fear of heights". Briefly, it involved an incident of going up the outside of the silo, on a ladder that was only partially fastened securely, and the ladder pulled away from the silo several inches with each rung. I ended up letting my fear get the best of me and I froze near the top for several minutes. I knew that no one was around at the time to help me so, screaming for help was a waste of time. I eventully talked myself into coming down the ladder and jumping the last 6 feet or so to the ground. I ended up with extreme leg cramps that doubled me up, and it took several minutes to recover from that. I presume the fear I felt, caused the muscle and leg cramps, and since that day, if I get more than 10 or 12 feet off the ground, I spend all my time hanging on, instead of accomplishing anything. I have owned two nice climbing treestands over the past 10 years or so and never used either one of them. In part, that was not having a 4 wheeler to haul them around in and set them up in advance. The main reason is that I was afraid to use them.

I have decided that this weekend, I am going to overcome my fear and hunt out of a treestand tower some 20 feet in the air. I have known for years, the advantages of elevation hunting; include but, are not limited to: 1. you can see more territory than if on the ground 2. Your scent is carried up and away from the deer 3. You can get away with more movement than is possible when you are eyeball to eyeball with a whitetail on the ground etc.

I absolutely would have filled my tags already this season if I had been in the tower stand. This weekend, I intend to overcome my fear with FAITH and try to take my first whitetail without my feet planted on "terra firma". I am hopeful that success will be mine and there will be an article on the website concerning my success. Dan www.gunsandoptics.com