But fear will falter all

I shamelessly stole the above quote from an old friend. I've been thinking a lot about fear and this line helped me come to a point where I think I can better articulate what's been simmering in my brain.
I've been taught that fear is the antithesis of faith and that if one is present, the other cannot exist. In the past I've often let fear be my guide. What's interesting to me is how I created a faulty "solution" to this problem of being guided by fear through the misunderstanding of this principle of faith vs. fear. The lesson I interpreted from this true principle was that fear was "bad" and that I was being "bad" when I felt it. So I did what I thought you were supposed to do with undesirable emotions--I suppressed it. I have come now to realize that is a very childish way of dealing with any issue. It's like when my mom would ask me to clean my room and instead of actually folding my clothes and putting things back in their place, I would stash everything either under the bed or in my closet. Voila! Clean, right? Well, maybe at first, but that sort of cleaning is only a quick fix. In a similar fashion, I treated the symptom rather than the source of my problem of fear. I fundamentally didn't understand the principle I had been taught in all my growing up years. I've been thinking about this a lot lately because I've been experiencing fear relating to me and my son's future and especially the loss I'm scared I'll be feeling when I no longer have an exclusive relationship with him and I have to share him. It may sound stupid, but I'm guessing I'm not the only one who's ever felt a little down thinking about the kicks and punches they'll no longer be feeling from the inside-out. I started to get after myself and tried to just convince myself that I was being unreasonable and, well, unrighteous (for lack of a better word) for feeling fear. But that obviously wasn't helping. It was once I started talking about my fears and figuring out ways I could actively conquer them that I ended up feeling better. And I recognize now that dealing with my emotions in that way--acknowledging and dealing with them rather than suppressing or running from them--will help me avoid the paralyzing long term affects of the quick fix. Something else that I think contributed to this faulty perception of fear vs faith is oversimplification. I am a firm believer in keeping things simple, but that doesn't mean things are simple. We should learn in a simple fashion, "line upon line, and precept upon precept." An atom is composed of relatively simple parts, but as you expand outward and study the relationships atoms create (molecules, cells, etc etc) you find at the other end something as unique and vastly complex as the human body. I think this works as a metaphor for other principles in life. Faith is related to much more than we often give it credit for. Like an atom, faith is a building block. It is the beginning source of a vast network of relationships to other principles that create something much bigger than simply "belief." Some relationships I've come to recognize are with love, hope, and patience. Each of those principles have relationships with others. And that's how the network grows into, well, the soul.
Forgive me if I'm being overly theological, but I've been going through a lot of self-discovery lately and I don't want to lose what I've learned. I don't claim that what I say is fact. Rather this is documentation of my spiritual progress. I can pretty much guarantee that I'll learn something new that will either change part of what I'm coming to now or maybe even build upon other branches of my discovery. Life is evolutionary. And thank goodness. If people couldn't change, I'd be in a pretty awful funk.
Continuing on about the network created by faith (I swear I'm almost done with my thoughts) I think that the real problem, at least for me, with my simplified view of faith was that I ended up underestimating the destructive power of fear. This brings me back to the title of this entry: "But fear will falter all." Now that I realize that faith is so much more than just believing in something, the principle that faith cannot exist where fear is present has a lot more impact. Fear can destroy so many good things! It truly can falter all! Love, hope, charity, peace; all the things that faith has relationships with cannot stand where fear dominates. I used to wonder how I got into the awful state of being that I was in, but now it makes a lot more sense. Fear is a disease that is not to be underestimated. It may sound overly dramatic, but based on my experience, fear will eat away at your soul's immune system, so-to-speak, until you no longer have the capacity to be happy. I feel like I sound like a fruitcake, but you can't be happy when you're scared. And I know that's true. Quick fixes just don't cut it. I want something that will last. And I think that the vulnerability that comes from acknowledging and dealing with legitimate fears in our lives is definitely worth the end result of true and lasting happiness.