Unafraid: Trusting God in an Unsafe World

In May of 1978, a fellow classmate calmly walked into Susie Davis’s eighth-grade Austin, Texas, classroom with a rifle and murdered her beloved English teacher in front of the class, then just as calmly walked back out. Susie was 14 years old. John was a quiet 13-year-old boy, a good student, and a childhood playmate of Susie’s. Mr. Grayson was the teacher who had recognized and nurtured her gift of writing.

Two years earlier, Susie had come to know and love Jesus, but on that day in May her relationship with Jesus changed. She continued to love him, but she no longer trusted him. Because God could have stopped this very bad thing from happening . . . but he didn’t.

Susie had thought of Jesus as her hero, but the hero she wanted would love her too much to let bad things like this happen to her. She suddenly felt abandoned. And she was terrified that God didn’t take control of all the evil in the world.

This horrific event was not Susie’s introduction to fear, though. In her book Unafraid, she says fear is something we all learn. Even if nothing terrible happens to us directly, we learn fear through other means such as television and other people’s stories. That was the case with Susie, being afraid even at 10 years old to stay at home alone at night. The Enemy wants a foothold wherever he can get it. In Susie’s life, that was fear.

After the shooting, her fear increased and spiraled out of control: panic attacks, not able to stay at home by herself even during the day, sleeping on the floor at night beside her parents’ bed because she couldn’t be in her room alone.

Unafraid is Susie Davis’s story of how fear can hold a person prisoner with its empty lies. But it’s also about how God can heal a broken life and how he wants to replace our fears with his peace. It tells how she learned to trust God again.

Susie does not hold back on uncovering her own “trash that comes from a soul wounded by trauma.” She shows us the pain, darkness, and ugliness that is intrinsic to fear. She shares her faulty thinking during this time. By exploring God’s Word, she exposes misconceptions we too may have about fear.

When Susie left home to attend college in Waco, she believed she was leaving her fears behind and her life would return to normal. But she soon discovered that fear resides inside a person. Since she hadn’t dealt with the cause of her fear, her belief that God had abandoned her, her inner life remained chaotic. It resulted in a bout with bulimia as she tried to gain some measure of control.

Then she got married and thought she would certainly be safe. She now had her husband to look under the bed and triple-check the door locks for her. But she was still listening to fear whisper “what if” and “you better take care of yourself” just in case God doesn’t come through. We think we are being smart, careful, concerned for our loved ones, but we’re actually allowing fear to control us.

Susie thought John had wrecked her life that day in May and she could protect herself by staying mad at him. Not until 18 years later did she realize she was harboring unforgiveness toward him, a sign of being afraid of getting hurt again. She learned how unforgiveness and fear move into a person’s life and begin to seem normal. But in spite of how we feel, she says, fear is not normal by God’s standards.

In Unafraid, Susie takes us on her journey from being addicted to what-ifs and oh nos and worshipping at the feet of fear to becoming a confident person living in the full knowledge that God truly is in control. She relates in detail the major steps along this difficult path for her, including finally realizing she wasn’t whole and she needed help; joining a Bible study of ladies who gave her unconditional acceptance and loved her through all the ugliness; experiencing a PTSD breakdown; learning to mourn; and recognizing the unforgiveness that had planted itself deep inside her. There were many tiny steps as well, with lots of twists and turns because healing doesn’t happen in a straight, clearly defined path.

Susie says that after healing “we have a choice to stay well or slip back into sickness.” Though she now lives unafraid, trusting in God, she still has to choose to walk away from fear on a daily basis by recognizing it as an idol that separates her from intimacy with God.

Fear is not an easy concept to grasp, but Susie guides us to understanding through personal transparency and with Biblical stories to illustrate truths. Her writing is in everyday language and clever. Throughout the book runs the theme of how trees, in every season of her life, have been love notes to her from God. In each chapter, she pauses in her story and asks the readers questions to help them through their own dark or confusing places, and she does it with understanding and grace—because she’s been there. Discussion questions and a study guide are also included in the back of the book.

Unafraid is an excellent book for not only those who have been struggling with fear for a long time, but also for those who may not even realize they live with fear because it has become “normal” to them. This book could open your eyes to fear you don’t know you have and show you a way to wholeness you didn’t know you were missing, where God can take his sovereign place in your life and you can enjoy the relationship you are meant to have with him.

Feature photo by Alejandro Tocornal on Unsplash