Merry Christmas, friends. I have a really special episode for you this week.

It is the first chapter from my book, Fierce Faith, a woman's guide to fighting fear,

wrestling, worry, and overcoming anxiety. This week, I'm going to share with you the first chapter

of the book, and next week I'm going to share with you a second chapter from the book that I feel like

is going to help you so much. The questions I get on my podcast more than any other questions

for the coaching segment have to do with fear and anxiety. And I haven't been going into them.

I've been kind of saving them up for a year end. Okay, let's just dive in to what I've taught in Fier's Faith. So as you're

listening to this today and you're listening to the chapter next week, I hope you're going to find

it so helpful. And of course, Fier's Faith is available in all bookstores and Amazon and Lifeway

and Barnes & Noble. I want to give you this chapter and the chapter next week

as a gift for you to end this year well and to go into next year strong. So here we go.

I left my house early one morning for a meeting at my boys' school, making sure I had more

than enough time to make a Starbucks run and a target trip, because if you have to sit through

a volunteer meeting, you might as well have coffee in a pretty notebook, right? As I ordered my

latte with an extra shot of espresso, thank you very much in the drive-through, no longer slaves

from Bethel worship started playing. And I reached over to the radio and I turned up the sound as loud as I could

without calling attention to this middle-aged mom bumping worship tunes in a minivan.

I love that song so much. Since the first time I heard it, I have to fight the urge to belt it out

at the top of my lungs. And as I pulled around the drive-through, I sang that I was not a slave to fear,

that I was a child of God, and without warning the words caught in my throat. It took me by surprise

on some deeper emotional level than ever before. I thought, man, I need that coffee worse than I

knew. I was trying to just explain away this emotional response to a song

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