Kathy Finlan

I’m about to embark on a journey, and I hope you come along! Today, I want to help you with “lessening your fears.” That’s right “lessening,” not “take away all your fears” because some fear is good for us!

I have realized that “fear” is something we are taught as small children.
It plays a huge role in how we live our lives as adults. The first time we lose someone or something as a child, it will cause you the fear of losing anything else thereafter.

Some children go through dramatic events at very young ages. Typically, a child doesn’t know they have been affected until they are much older.

I, myself, have recognized how fear controls me today. I believe it is true – Fear and Pain go hand and hand! I fear I’ll never really be happy until I heal from the dramatic childhood I had. Understanding that has been my hardest step yet!

I also believe God wants to help me and YOU! Six months ago, I signed up to receive emails from a Christian paster from California, Havilah Cunnington. I found her on social media last summer and enjoyed her content, and most of all, her passion for wanting to help others. In those six months that I’ve received her emails, I never opened a single one for no other reason other than – I was just too busy. On January 6th, I opened my first email from Havilah Cunnington. Strangely enough, just an hour prior to opening Havilah’s email, I was writing in my journal about how I felt as a child. My feelings quickly brought me to tears. I wrote, “God, please help me heal my pain!

I believe God answered my prayer!

This is how Havilah’s email went..

Hey Kathy,

As children, we experienced circumstances, completely out of our control that caused serious pain. We were naive to the harsh reality that this level of hurt even existed. Our suffering may not have been as severe as someone next to us, but it still played a pivotal role in forming our emotional foundation. Pain taught us to deal with hurt in whatever way necessary. Making every attempt possible to stop or suppress our pain, we still lacked the ability to fully control our environment.

Depending on how hurtful our childhood was, we developed deep patterns…ways to survive our pit of pain. The goal: survive until you become an adult. Getting older doesn’t guarantee we’re wiser. Going through HARD THINGS becomes a journey of survival. A motionless experience that is more familiar than free. We might say something like: “Getting the pain to stop as soon as possible is a matter of doing (just fill in the blank)!” It becomes a matter of technique. How quickly can we stop our pain without stopping the flow of our daily lives? “Doing whatever it takes” becomes our goal. Each of us attempt to keep the pain out of our now grown-up lives… or so we think.

The LIE: we can control the effects of our pain. We believe that pain, as long as it’s not influencing us now, will not hurt us. This is a myth! When a prisoner is set free from prison, it doesn’t mean he or she is set free from the issues that put them in prison. We attempt to avoid the harsh reality that we are still bound by pain.

Kathy, my prayer for you as you start this new year AND new decade, is that you discover the God who redeems and heals; the One who turns our mourning into dancing and restores all things. I recently released a new book called I Do Hard Things: Breaking Free of Fear and Pain and wanted to give you the first chapter.

Happy New Year! – Havilah

Now, I was beside myself! Knowing that God heard my cry out to him filled me with hope and faith! I believe Havilah’s book will become a tool to help (me) YOU break FREE from the Fear and Pain that is holding YOU back from living my happiest life!

Still today, I witness so many children going through trauma. That is where I find my strength in wanting to help them. Our youth needs our help more than our world can imagine! My prayer is that God will give me the tools to help more then just myself!

#Godisgoodallthetime

If you’d like to order Havilah’s book – I Do Hard Things, or you can follow along through audio lesson by clicking on the link below