Fear is a fundamental gift of God

Yes, I know that it is hard to imagine, but fear is a gift.  Of course, it is a gift of the Holy Spirit - Fear of the Lord.  I read this meditation the other day which so accurately explained the gift of the fear of God that I wanted to share it.  Fear is a fundamental gift because it roots us in the truth about God and divine things.
"Without special help from God what would we have done on a certain day, at a certain hour? What choice would we have made? Without His continuing help, what would we do tomorrow?
When we stand before these two abysses - the abyss of the infinite purity of God, the only good, inaccessible to the sinner, and the abyss of our own wretchedness and weakness - we are seized with an impulse of retreat, to dread. This is not a matter of distrust, nor of discouragement or despair.  It is a piercing, poignant and purifying view of what we are in very truth before the eyes of God.  As long as we have not been purified by this sentiment, we cannot say that we have tasted the Lord.  It is fear that first makes us know and experience what God is and what we are."
I thought fear was not of God.  But, how can Fear of the Lord be a gift be a gift of the Holy Spirit?  Fear causes people to move, to change to grow.  If we are too afraid to see ourselves as God sees us than we have unhealthy fear.  Holy, healthy fear make our faculties for knowing and loving receptive to God's grace.