Suzanne Schaffer

We took a trip to Florida recently and I was amazed at how I felt as I boarded the plane. It was same as when I boarded the shuttle bus that would carry us from long-term parking to the terminal. I kept waiting for the fear to rise but it never did. Not too long ago I was frozen on the ground. Merely observing a plane overhead caused me to panic. To actually fly made me physically ill and I'd obsess over the trip for months in advance. The night before a return trip home -just four years ago- saw me curled up on the bathroom floor, sobbing. It was irrational and I knew it, but the fear had me gripped in its claws. It no longer controls me. I still don't like flying. I don't like how it makes me feel; I get the same feeling on an elevator and I don't like that either, yet after years of giving into the fear I decided it needed to end.  I couldn't allow fear -of any kind- to control me. Fear is a trick of the enemy, used to keep us in place. I was allowi...

I've regularly exercised for most of my life. Not because I love it, but because it benefits me; it loves me. As a child I spent most of my time on my bike, in a pool, or playing Freeze-Tag or one of its variations, TV Tag anyone? When I grew older I had an indoor exercise bike that I rode to nowhere. I took an aerobics class in college taught by a teacher who was in love with James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac, and Don McLean.  Somehow jumping around to, " Bye-bye Miss American Pie ," didn't get my heart rate up, though it did give me shin splints in both legs. Sigh .  After I married I bought a treadmill and continued my quest for fitness. Then came babies and the treadmill was another rack for my clothes.  I joined some health clubs over the years: The karate place - smelled like feet, I couldn't get past the stink. The women's-fitness-in-a-circle place - the small talk was dizzying. The Judgement-Free-Zone place - too many people, too many machines,...