I think it’s time to dream again.

I’m tired of this fearful outlook all the time. I’m tired of the news and it’s obsession with worst-case-scenarios.

I’m tired of Albertans taking every piece of information at face value and not questioning the hand guiding it.

I don’t like that we’re susceptible to fear and propaganda. I don’t like that we get tunnel vision and forget that suffering comes in many shapes and sizes. I don’t like that we so focused on one thing that we stopped treating other things.

I don’t like that the gaps in our families and businesses were cruelly exposed. I don’t like that the gaps in our personal capacity to deal with crisis were either.

I don’t like that all sorts of ridiculous numbers were projected and that the fear card was played in order to get a quick result, sure it worked at the beginning but fear has a way of not stopping.

Fear does not help someone suffering. Fear makes everyone suffer.

Here we have an opportunity for a reset, but fear will continue to “wait for better news” before it acts and changes the mood, but that results in this horrible thing called Not Moving Forward.

Fear always tells us to wait before we rebuild, wait before we hope, wait before we feel like humans again, wait to venture outside, wait until there’s no risk whatsoever.

I’m teaching my second daughter Ailish how to drive right now if one wants to talk about risk, but if we don’t risk a little now she’ll stay at home forever and that would just be weird for us all:)

Fear projects the most horrible thing it can imagine with the promise “At least reality won’t be as bad as we feared!”. One must keep in mind that when a deal is struck with Fear to avoid Greater Fear we’ve made a deal with the same devil anyways.

Can we not confidently and surely deal with this reality? Should the surgeon’s hand be hesitant and shake? Where are the leaders who can make the hard decisions and screw the courage of the people to a sticking place? Where are those who call us to noble deeds?

I was so sickly as a child and afraid of dying I find it hard to describe how it was today… the thing that grabbed me by the throat nightly and made me afraid ended up being a gift perhaps a few of you could use now.

Fear holds a gun to your head that may or may not have bullets and threatens to pull the trigger.

Of course, one can’t say for certain it IS a gun because one can’t actually see it.

Almost like those old shows where someone points their finger in their pocket at you and you do what they say because you can’t risk it NOT being a gun?

I finally got fed up with being afraid and by the time I was five decided I’d rather get sick and die than live the rest of my life being afraid of getting sick and dying. I called its bluff. I couldn’t control it one way or the other in any case.

Maybe you had the luxury of a healthier childhood and I’m really glad you did, but it made me realize something:

Fear demands worship, but I only worship One now and he is not afraid.

It’s time to dream again.

If your business doesn’t make it through this crisis build another one, just make sure you learn the lessons and build margin for when the sun doesn’t shine so this sort of thing doesn’t catch us out of net again.

If you made critical errors in your home do whatever you have to do to get the issues out in the open and get some real help. At least you know now you can’t ultimately fix everything by yourself and your pride was the real problem.

If you cowered in isolation and didn’t reach out or reach up, make a vow that your life moving forward will have the courage to borrow the faith of someone who refused to believe the sky was falling.

If your lack of investment in the life after this life, your lack of a robust faith in any God you can’t control, your lack of asking perhaps the only questions that mattered, your past belief system that had more to do with the pizza you ate than the humble exploration of the mysteries of the heavens above left you scared and uncertain…

Build a life tomorrow your grandchildren would be proud of.

I’ve said for a long time (and received criticism) that it’s a waste of time to “Live for what you wouldn’t die for”, but that only makes sense if you’ve lived in the shadow of death awhile. I don’t think death is the end I think it’s the beginning.

Ironically I prepared for it years ago when fear lost its hold on me. When I dared it to do its worst and ran in the opposite direction where faith and the hand of heaven found me.

I do not fear the storms to come, I see the clouds rolling up on the horizon and know a day is coming that will make fear afraid.

Where are the people who would build in the time of famine?

Where is the courage of our forefathers? Would we shame them by holding their dreams with faltering hearts? Did they not face war and hunger and vow to build a better world?

They left old countries mired in terror and came to a new land where they could worship unafraid.

…and here we are worshiping the old gods they ran from…

I refuse to be afraid. My emotions are my own and it’s time they lined up with my beliefs.

I refuse to live in a world where my daughters fear for tomorrow. If they learn fear it will not be from me.

Dreams have a way of defeating fear,

And I have big dreams…