Spiritual Seesaw

The last few days have been an emotional seesaw for me. Up an down, up and down, over and over. It seems that when I am having a good moment, it is quickly followed by a bad, or at least it seems that way. I have become more aware of this seesaw.
When I was a child, I loved to ride the seesaw. My dad made one for my brother and I and we abused each other on it. It was great. It was John Deere green and we usually got splinters every time we rode it, but that did not matter. We would laugh and laugh until we could no longer breathe. It was great trying to knock the other one off, especially when they were up as far as they could go. It's something that siblings do, at least, that is what we did.
Now, as an adult, I still enjoy the seesaw....... at the park. The emotional seesaw is another story. I am typically upbeat, outgoing, and energetic. As of late, I am finding myself a bit more introspective, introverted, and looking within. I know this is a growing and mending process. After all, you cannot heal it if you do not acknowledge it. Or, as we say in Celebrate Recovery, you cannot heal what you cannot feel. For too long, I repressed my feelings and my emotions and did not allow myself to feel. I kept my head down and my heart quiet. I was living in the land of denial.
In this land, my feelings became disabled, I lost energy, I had no spiritual or emotional growth, I became isolated from my friends, my family and God, my relationships became weak (or I became alienated from my relationships), and it only lengthened my pain. So, why was I living here? That is a question I do not even know the answer to. I just know that it is where I existed. It was my coping mechanism. It was.
In my denial, I knew fear. The crippling, disabling, debilitating fear. I was unable to move left, right, forward or back. So, I went in circles, got dizzy and fell often. Now, I realize that my fear was a lack of faith. A lack of faith in myself and a lack of faith in God. With little faith, comes great fear. With great faith, comes little fear. As I have moved out of my denial, I still have fear. I will always feel fear. It is what I do with this fear. Do I allow it to control me, or do I use it propel myself forward? I now have courage, unlike any I have ever had before. My courage is now managed by my faith.
In the book, "You want me to do what?" by Michael Youssef, he puts it like this:
"It's not sin to experience a moment of fear when we face a genuine threat. But a pattern of habitual fear, worry and timidity will rob us of our joy and our effectiveness for God. Fear and faith are like opposite ends of a seesaw. When fear is up, faith is down. When faith is up, fear is down. The stronger our faith, the weaker and less significant our fears. Courage is not the absence of fear. Rather, courage is fear managed by faith. When our emotions are ruled by faith, fear cannot control us.....people of faith and courage do not let their fears determine their actions."