A blessing of fear in these years is that it invites us to become the fullness of ourselves. It comes to us in the nighttime of the soul to tell us to rise to new selves in fresh and exciting ways—for our sake, of course, but for the sake of the rest of the world, as well.
When everything familiar has been sheared away -- either because we have physically separated ourselves from our "home", or because our inner exploration has taken us beyond our old self -- we are presented with a great opportunity for spiritual growth. At such time, we are likely to examine our lives more deeply than we ever have before and be asked to trust far beyond our understanding. T.S. Eliot knew this place very well and expressed it eloquently in his poem, "East Coker":
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing;
there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all
in the waiting.