Fear Less

some thoughts on fear, running, and love perfected

I have an awesome friend named Corri who runs a Substack called “Fearless and Joyful.” You can follow her newsletter here:

Corri writes about her experience as a homeschool mom, shares the occasional poem, and writes on faith and spirituality. She’s one of my best friends, among my strongest encouragers, and proofreads almost all of my posts.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been training for a couple of races coming up this Fall and Winter. This means I’ve spent a lot of time doing recovery runs, tempo runs, and a weekly long run. As the weeks go on, I’ll be running more and more miles as my races get closer.

My dad, my son, and me after our race in early August.

To train, I use the Nike Run Club app which has training programs and runs you can do without having to start a particular program. The head coach is Coach Chris Bennet, and he has to be one of the most encouraging people on the planet. He has put such a different spin on running for me, and he has opened me up to different ways running can help me in every area of my life.

By the way, the app is free.

This week, I had to run a 5k recovery run. A recovery run is where you don’t try to get your best time, and you really don’t want your pace to get more than a conversation pace. That is, you should be running light and easily enough to be able to carry on a conversation while you run. This means keeping your heart rate in “zone 2.”

In each run, Coach Bennet talks to you throughout the run to encourage you, cheer you on, and challenge you to keep going. Each run has a theme, and this run was called “The Fear Less 5k.”

Note that it’s not called the Fearless 5k; it’s Fear Less.

In sports, a lot of people talk about being fearless, but Coach Bennet argues that fear can actually be a good thing. Fear tells us to be careful near that ledge, or to watch out for that sketchy person in the alley.

But fear can get out of hand and take over our lives.

So he challenges us to “fear less.” Have less of the unhealthy fear and respect for the healthy kind of fear.

Scripture distinguishes between these kinds of fear as well. On one hand, wise people within Scripture tell us to “fear” of “respect” God. On the other hand, John says “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).

We can also use fear as an invitation to take risks. When we come across something that makes us uncomfortable or a bit nervous, we have a tendency to walk away.

But sometimes we are nervous before a wedding, before stepping up to the free throw line, before getting on the next starting line, or before playing our instrument in a live show.

But these feelings of fear, what we might call “stage fright,” precede some of the best times in our lives.

So fear might be an invitation to step into something great!

In this week’s blog post, I challenge you to fear less. This doesn’t mean you won’t have any fear, but it does mean that you will see your fear as an invitation to bravery.

Fear Less and Joy Full.