I grew up in a state where fair skies were the norm, beautiful mountains could be hiked, and the waters of the Pacific Ocean enjoyed. While I certainly enjoyed all of those things, growing up in Southern California also quickly acquainted me with fear. I am sure that I would have been a fearful person no matter where I grew up but the uglier realities of living in Southern California increased my natural tendency to fear exponentially. Turn on the local news and, of course, you were inundated with news of rapes, kidnappings, murders, and even serial killers. But unfortunately there were even more "closer to home" examples as well. A woman in our church was stabbed and killed as she was taking her morning jog by a man who was casually jogging past her from the opposite direction. A guy from our youth group was killed by a gang on the beach. The examples were not all violence. My brother's best friend died in a car accident when he was a teenager. We visited one of my dad's friends in L.A. who went into a depression and lost everything when his wife left him (he was literally living at the park for quite some time as a homeless person). A young wife died of cancer (as did my mom). These people were professing Christians and this challenged my young hopes that God protected those that belonged to him. It was quite obvious to me that God "allowed bad things to happen to good people" and so I became even more fearful.
