Hi Dawn! Really good post. You made me think about the "fear" in a different way. On the one hand, there's the list of fears of a doctrinal nature that we can dispose of by a rather straightforward intellectual process, on our own, "I see the evidence and I've changed my belief." On the other hand, there is that one big fear of the unknown that doesn't go away until we actually make it through to the "other side." But that "other side" is not a thought process, it is a place. And we don't know that we've reached that place until we see all the other people standing there in the same place with us.
That's what I think about this forum; sites like this provide the emotional support and human interaction that enable us to know that we have indeed reached that place. And then the final fear goes away.
Craig