Wholehearted: When Fear Takes the Field

How the table shapes what we believe and who we become

Sometimes you can feel it before you can name it.

You don’t always notice the moment something shifts. 

Our son started playing football in third grade, and midway through the season something shifted. He started hesitating at the snap. He was slower on his feet. What changed, we wondered? He had been playing so well up until now. Then it dawned on us. He was now the one carrying the ball. All eyes were on him. He was the target. He would sustain the hits. He would be instrumental in delivering the win or causing defeat. 

At such a young age, sports are not about performance. They are about formation. While we never asked our son to be perfect, we did ask for excellence. No one is perfect, but we are called to work with excellence. Excellence is defined by giving the best you can give, regardless of the outcome. But what we recognized was a young boy who was hesitating because fear had taken his place on the field.

From the time our son was five, he told us he wanted to be a soldier. I told him he already was. When he asked Jesus into his heart at this early age, I explained he was now a soldier in God’s army. This always resonated with him. When his dad and I saw that fear had surfaced, I returned to the language he understood. I told him every decision he made was part of a battle, and he had to decide who he was going to hand the victory to. If God said he was capable, but he believed fear was more capable, he was handing victory to the wrong side. Before he even stepped onto the field, he now understood the battle to be between giving God the victory or giving it to the enemy we call fear.

The following gameday, Saturday, we saw a different boy come out of the huddle. He was quick, decisive, and moved with precision. What had changed? After the game, I noticed something written beneath his arm pads, but I could not make out the words. While packing up the car to return home, he took his pads off and I could clearly read the permanent marker image our son had drawn. On one arm was a cross and written above it “Go God,” and on the other arm, “Beat Satan.” These words were beautifully simple and powerfully true. They served as a reminder to our son that he had a choice as to whom he would give the victory that day. The outcome on the scoreboard did not matter, but the decision our son made to beat fear did. 

This story centers on a football game, but it speaks to how we mold our lives and the lives of our families. Most of the formation within our families does not happen in the public arena, but in the quiet stillness of the home. In The Law of Happiness, Henry Cloud writes that joyful people think well, and they do not allow a single negative moment to define their entire identity. He describes two women who join a dating site. One faces rejection and concludes she is unlovable and withdraws, while the other experiences the same rejection but continues and eventually marries. One woman let one moment in her history define her entire life. The other woman took that same moment in history but did not let it shape her identity.

The difference between these two women was not in their circumstances, because they both experienced the same thing. The difference was in their interpretation of the circumstance, and that distinction defines our perception of reality. Some people take a painful moment and attach it to their entire story, while others acknowledge the pain but refuse to let it speak the final word. They do not deny hardship, but they place it in its proper position.

When I sat down to write this essay, I put myself into the shoes of both women. I would describe myself as a happy woman. But when I started looking at my life through various circumstances, my demeanor changed. I began recounting my life story up to this point. My father’s terminal illness, my cousin’s death, my grandfather being shot, infertility, our son’s military accident, my mother’s debilitating fall, and my own health struggles. I said to myself, “Wow. I really could be a victim in my own life if I allowed myself to.” But the reality is, even after dwelling on all these negative things, my spirit was joyful. I viewed each situation as though it were contained in a box. Each incident had its moment in time, but that time did not carry over into who I was. These experiences shaped me, but they did not define me.

I can safely assume that every person reading this essay has had equally, if not greater, hardships in life. Yet throughout the years, I have seen two different responses to suffering, and the contrast is very clear. Some people grow bitter, and others grow in strength and joy, even when both have walked through real pain. Grief must run its course, and it is not something we rush or manage away, but eventually we face a decision about what will anchor us as we move forward in life.

This does not mean we dismiss pain or ignore real mental health needs, but for many of us, the daily battle is quieter and happens only in our thoughts. In Romans 12:2, we are instructed to renew our minds, and that instruction requires intention. The greatest battlefield most of us will face often sits between our ears, shaping how we interpret what we face.

I have learned to recognize negative thought patterns as part of a spiritual battle, and I no longer let them go unchallenged. When self-doubt says I am not enough, I measure it against truth, and when fear says I cannot, I look it in the face and say, “Yes, I can.” Each time I return to what scripture has already stated, because repeating these truths is how belief takes root.

We must learn to guard our minds with intention. For believers, this is not self-powered. The strength to think well is not something we manufacture through effort alone, but something we receive through Christ. We are in a battle every day, and while challenges are certain, the voice we trust will determine the outcome.

“Go God. Beat Satan” was written on a little boy’s arms that washed away in the evening bath, but the truth behind it remains. The question is not whether the battle exists, but whether we recognize where it is being fought.

Our son learned this lesson around our family dinner table. He was not eating alone, and my husband was not in another room working. We were together, at the table, having our normal family mealtime. It is through these moments at the table that life unfolds. Children hear how life is interpreted and how disappointment is named, and they begin to understand what is true and what is false. They watch those around them to see if fear leads, or faith, in life’s up and down moments. And over time, those patterns learned at the dinner table soon become a child’s own beliefs.

Something transformational happens every time we sit down to break bread together. The table is not only where meals are served, but where minds are formed and hearts are anchored. For our son, this otherwise ordinary family meal is where he learned that circumstances do not define him, and that truth comes from something deeper than what he felt in the moment.

In that steady rhythm of ordinary days, the table becomes a place where lasting joy begins to take shape.

Together with you,

Lisa Lou

This is the kind of truth that settles into the way we lead our homes. Share this with a woman who is shaping a family, one ordinary meal at a time.

Discover More