HER.

So this is a post about love, friendship, relationships, and fear. This is a post about how we all stumble across truth in our lives and the real difficulty that comes when we are faced with the opportunity to stand in it or negotiate with fear. This is a post about the reality of wanting to be light and live in the light and the sacrifices that can come with that. Yes, this is a post about love.

This is also a post about a girl I met a few years ago. Do you ever meet someone, hang out once, and then decide in your head that you are going to be best friends with that person? Me too. So we became best friends. I started learning so much from her, laugh- ing so hard with her, dreaming with her, creating with her, and it was beyond wonderful. This best friend- ship eventually came to the place where we were both willing to acknowledge that there could be more. We wanted more. More could be beautiful.

We talked and dreamed and imagined what life could be like with more. We talked about the great things that our lives could accomplish together, and we talked about all of the seemingly terrible things we would endure. But in the end, we decided that more was worth it.

I was and still am grateful for a lot of things throughout this journey with her. I am grateful that my relationship with God has only grown stronger since I have known her. I am grateful that I was already deeply rooted in a community that would be as loving and kind and excited as ever when they found out. I am grateful for a family that puts love above everything else. But I was also weirdly grateful for an opportunity to look fear in the face and see what I was actually made of. I was and am grateful that my journey with her has really shown me so much of who I am and who I could be. Am I a person who will shrink down in the face of fear? Will I negotiate my truth? Am I strong enough to stand?

I know that our story will not come without its challenges, and the more people who know, the more challenges will come I am sure. But I was listening to a friend’s podcast the other day, and he was talk- ing about how every time he shared his story, he felt a beam of light come into his life. So while telling anyone that will read this on the internet is scary and opens us up to a myriad of criticism, this is also me being flooded with light.

I heard someone say once that fear is a liar. Well, I don’t know if that is necessarily true. I think fear is more of an oppressor than a liar. It was fear telling me not to say anything because people might think a certain way about my parents or they might judge or question my relationship with God. It was fear telling me that this might change the way people treat me or my family, and you know what? All of these things are probably true. Fear is not a liar but a captor. Yes, all of those things might very well happen, and now I have a choice to live the rest of my life based on what fear says or face fear head-on and remove all of its power. I choose the second.

I am here to say that fear has no power over love, and I will not walk in darkness or bring anyone down there with me.

This post isn’t just about me telling everyone that I am super happy to have found someone who is hilarious and brilliant and kind and loves Jesus (although I am).This is a post to say I know I am not the only one who has a choice to make right now—a choice to stand in the light of truth and your story or let the voice of fear shrink you down into darkness. The choice is all of ours.

Let’s start standing up to fear in a way that creates freedom for others to stand with us. The world desperately needs us to.

Oh, and Sami, thanks for teaching me one of the greatest things I’ve ever learned and being there every step of the way as I learned it.

XX,
Brit Barron