A place of fear

I was listening to a pastor talking about Christians who either come from a place of fear or a place of love in their relationship to God.  I started thinking, what am I afraid of?  It turns out, a lot!

What do I fear:
     I fear never feeling joy again (there's a difference between being 'happy' and having 'joy'.  Joy is
         deep-seated, it reaches to your soul; 'happiness' can easily be only surface deep)
     I fear disappointing God
     I fear disappointing the people around me
     I fear losing my other kids (God's taken one, He could take them all)
     I fear never trusting Him again
     I fear becoming bitter
     I fear my marriage falling apart (don't read anything into that, Eric & I are good, it's just hard 
         grieving a child)
     I fear not loving God enough
     I fear forgetting Ian - the sound of his voice, the warmth of his hugs, the roll of his eyes
     I fear going deep and finding there's nothing there
     I fear the questions I have and the answers I might find
     I fear the future

I think I can safely say, I'm coming from a place of fear.  I'm stuck in a rut and part of me wants to be here.  Letting go of the sadness correlates to letting go of Ian and I'm not ready to do that.   Even wanting joy in my life feels like a betrayal of him, like his impact on my life was small and insignificant.  When the reality is that being a mom to my children has been everything to me and Ian deserves to be mourned and missed because he was significant - he mattered.

But this rut, this chasm I find myself in, has the consequence of making it very easy to become bitter.  Bitterness is the easy road and it's a daily choice not to go there. It takes a real effort to not chose bitterness.  It's hard work to try and see how this can make me better; and it's exhausting!  And some days, I don't have the energy to fight it but I realize that bitter is not the woman I want to be.