february fears

february. one month in to this commitment of being fearless and i'm already so far out of my comfort zone i just want to throw up.
what i didn't know when I committed to being fearless was that it would include committing to having conversations so hard and so painful and so difficult that i would literally get sick, that i wouldn't sleep or eat, and that i would have panic attacks and feel like i couldn't breathe. it meant that i would feel depression and anxiety so deep within me again that i couldn't hardly function and get anything done. it meant sleeping less than 4 hours a night and having to trust that god (and coffee) would sustain me each day because i had nothing else left in me to put up a fight. every day this month i had this thought process... why did you challenge me to be fearless this year? you knew what this year was going to hold when you asked me to be fearless. you knew how hard it was going to be. honestly, i'm a little angry that you asked me to be fearless. i know you did it so i would have to rely on you to get me through it, but CRAP i didn't know being fearless would be so hard.
february was so hard. so freaking hard. when i say february was hard, that is not an exaggeration. it was so incredibly freaking hard. maybe one of the hardest months I've ever had, and that says a lot because i've had a lot of hard months in my 29 years of life. i lost my grandpa and couldn't really even focus on that because i was so focused on having to go to the funeral and see someone who ripped a hole so deep in my heart that i don't know how it will ever be repaired. i was so focused on having to have the most difficult conversations with my cousins that I've ever had to have that i couldn't even cry about grandpa being gone. death is a hard thing to process anyway, so adding facing a fear that left me feeling paralyzed made it 100 times more difficult. 
february also taught me that being fearless can be so freaking hard, but can also be so incredibly freeing. broken and beautiful, beauty from ashes, this is the hard eucharisteo that i've been learning about.
when i made the choice to go to my grandpas funeral and face someone who crushed our family, i had no idea that it would lead to having conversations with my family that i could have never imagined having. i had no idea it would lead my heart to open to and start processing through things that i stuffed down and locked away because they were too painful. it opened the door to keep having the hard conversations with my family. it allowed me time to start to grieve what happened and how it has affected us all. so in a weird way, I'm thankful for losing grandpa. because without that loss, we would still be moving along with things unsaid and feelings untouched. breaking down the wall is the hardest step, but once the wall is down and the floodgate is open, it allows for so much freedom and that is so beautiful in the most broken mess of a way. but even though it opened the door, there is still so far to go. there are wounds so deep i don't know how they are going to be healed. i don't know how to keep processing through the hard things so i don't shut the door to my heart again. i don't know how to grieve a death, knowing that it means the end of so many things besides just life itself. i don't know how to process through that. 
february was so hard. 
please don't let this be a glimpse into how the hard the rest of the year is going to be.