Fear of Missing Out
As a writer and household manager, I spend most of my time at home. Although my work is often exhausting and the hours are long, home is still my comfort zone. Comfort zones are those familiar places where we feel secure and have an illusion of control. We tend to avoid anything that could upset such blissful equilibrium or cause discomfort, so it takes force to propel oneself out of a comfort zone and into a novel situation. For me, that force is FOMO: the fear of missing out.
FOMO gets a bad rap because it is often caused by envy—the feeling that others are enjoying things you are missing. My FOMO is less about envy and more about growth and opportunity. I fear becoming comfortable and complacent and missing out on what God has in store outside my comfort zone. This “good” fear helps me overcome my natural inertia, giving me the willingness to risk the unknown. And I know from experience that it is a risk worth taking because whenever I do, God rewards me with surprising growth and unique opportunities to participate in His work.
The first time I learned this, I was 13. I had spent a year scrimping, saving, selling donuts, and seeking donations to visit and help mission partners in Europe with my church youth group. But the night before I was to leave, I decided there was no way I was giving up the safety of home to fly across the ocean without my parents for 17 days. Terrified of the unknown and sad to leave the familiar, I told my dad I was not going. Then I cried myself to sleep.
But the following day, there I was, climbing into a church van with my fellow travelers and heading to the airport. The fear of missing out on whatever God had planned for me in Europe outweighed the fear of leaving the comfort of home and family.
The experience was not easy. It was physically uncomfortable because we traveled for weeks, packed like sardines in narrow vans without enough sleep. But it was also emotionally and spiritually uncomfortable, like when we walked through a gas chamber at a Jewish concentration camp or held up our passports, hands shaking, to show machine gun wielding guards so we could enter communist East Germany.
However, on that challenging trip across Europe in a bright green Volkswagen van stuffed with teenagers, I learned that discomfort is often an unavoidable price for growing, serving, and sharing faith. It was worth it.
Not all trips take us to physical places, though. Some involve moving into new seasons, relationships, roles, or jobs. As with physical travel, these metaphorical journeys entail moving from a familiar pasture to a strange, new field. Some of my wildest adventures have been traveling through the terrain of marriage and parenting. Some of the scariest ones were walking with my sister through her years of ALS and navigating multiple health issues in my kids.
Many trips outside the zone of comfort do not even require leaving home. Some of mine have included fostering and adopting children, inviting new people over for a meal, donating money, and publishing faith essays on the internet.
Despite knowing from experience that even the hardest journeys are valuable, I still find myself pleading with God in the midst of them for a swift return to a state of ease. Even on journeys I choose, I want the trips to be comfortable.
Unfortunately, nothing in the Bible says that is how Christian life works. Instead, it tells story after story of God constantly moving people out of their comfort zones and into challenging and foreign situations. From Abraham to Isaac to Joseph to Ruth to David to Mary to Jesus to all the disciples, the journey to eternity with Christ is not a story of staying cozy in our nests. A willingness to be on the move and depend on God, wherever He leads us, comes with the territory of Christianity. And so do rich rewards for following Christ.
In his book A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, author Philip Keller explains that one of the most essential roles of a shepherd is to keep sheep on the move.* The best shepherd is one who constantly assesses both his flock and grazing lands, guiding the sheep as needed to fresh pastures to ensure maximum growth and health. Since God is the best Shepherd, it is not surprising that when the benefits of one pasture are maximized, He moves us to a new one. Whether in literal or figurative travels, God’s objectives are the same: spiritual health, maturity, holiness, and evangelism.
We can fight the moves, refusing to graze in the new fields and choosing to keep life small. We can avoid addressing relationship problems or spurn new roles that might test us. We can say no to embracing the next season of life and grow bitter. In anger or frustration, we can even turn away from God when faced with pastures we do not like. I have done all these things - not for wise reasons but only to avoid discomfort. Doing so is a recipe for spiritual stagnation and a guarantee of missing out. Because although our human nature longs for earthly security, our spirits long to journey toward God.
And when we are willing to forgo some earthly comfort and travel with Him to new pastures, He offers rich and worthwhile gifts. Among them are knowledge, joy, strength, peace, healing, wisdom, freedom, and maturity. If fear of missing out can act as a catalyst for obedience and trust in a journey that takes us to such treasures and, ultimately, home, I say that FOMO is not such a bad thing.
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*Keller, W. Phillip. (2007). A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. Grand Rapids, MN: Zondervan.