"List three fears... Now imagine they floated away in three hot air balloons.
What would you be free to do?"
The exercise is in the colorful journal of random instructions that promise to help me live more present but not try to be perfect. Most pages are palatably light and fluffy, but this one challenges me. I find myself chewing on the question. I know what I'm afraid of, that's the easy part: failure - letting others down; the opinion of others - not as much as I have been afraid, but the snake is not dead; disappointing God - really, how to only pick three? But the daydream that I could let those parts of my soul-fabric float away and be left with a new-found freedom doesn't easily resonate. I would be free to ... to what? Honestly, not one thing comes to mind! Aren't my fears the motivations that keep me doing the things I should? If I didn't fear failing as a mother, what would motivate me to put my all into my kids? Doesn't fear of God evoke my obedience to Him? If I didn't have fear, what would I have? Freedom? Freedom to what?? Love...? "Perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." John 4:18
"There is so much fear here." She meant this town, she newly arrived from the big city so unlike our little metropolis - but there was a deeper meaning for me. The fearful attributes of the town as a whole describe me quite accurately as an individual.
And then a conversation with the wise daughter, making more and more grown-up decisions all the time. She asks about the work of motherhood (she the second mother to this whole brood!), and we discuss, and her comment off-handedly springs forth, "But you are never happy, Mom!" I flinch. She sees and tries to retract it, rephrase it, repackage it; but the truth refuses to be brushed away. Is that how she sees me? How they see me? After all the years of reading the Gifts book and following the blogs and writing the lists - to one thousand and beyond? I printed the words and taped them to walls, reminders to choose and to breathe and to let God. But she says it didn't "work" - that the joy I sought might have been poured in, but it isn't seeping out. Why not?
And so I started a quest to find my joy; my happy; my self, perhaps. I had perused books whose authors had done it. It seems you take a pilgrimage somewhere or cook through a book in a year or take a new job overseas - and somehow happiness is waiting at the end. Is that the way? Perhaps, since I didn't seem to have found it my way... but where should I go or what would I cook or where could I possible go (am I supposed to take the eight or leave them to find their own way?)? And so I just write down my thoughts and pray and the start the journal that promises to cure my perfectionism in 60 artistic pages. But I don't think I have found anything yet.
I absently pull a journal off the shelf one morning, a journal filled with the words and prayers and lessons from a year long past. And I skim the entries and the tears well up as I find the heart cries of the yesteryear the same cries I wrestle to express today. Why the same lessons? Why the same prayers for the purpose and the motivation and the joy? Why am I still here? What is the super-strength adhesive that keeps me in this place?
Fear? That word again... I thought the fears moved me, that they drove me forward to escape their dreadful teeth. But perhaps only my head is spinning, giving the illusion of rapid motion, when in truth, I am stuck. Rooted to this spot. Rooted...in fear.
But what if the fantasy balloons could take away the looming fears - what would be left behind? Perhaps another fear should go at the top of the list - the fear of being without fear! Of being fear less! But what if fear did die and love was resurrected in its place? What if? If grace is greater than sin, shouldn't love be greater than fear? Wouldn't that "greatness" motivate me to actions beyond what I could ask or think to be possible. Isn't the life after resurrection so beyond comparison with the life before death. "Death is the nonnegotiable prerequisite to resurrection." Fear must die for the fruits of love to be born.
Great God and Father, I want to choose love. But how? How to love and speak the love when I am as fluent as the newborn?
He speaks: "Keep reading..."
"In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
"We love because He first loved us."
I don't have to know the language, because He does. I don't have to know how to do because He will do. He always goes first - in the life I must life, in the death I must die, to the resurrection I must have, to the love I must give.
He loves me. So I can love.
Fearlessly...
and His joy will be my strength.
and His strength will be my joy.
What would you be free to do?"
The exercise is in the colorful journal of random instructions that promise to help me live more present but not try to be perfect. Most pages are palatably light and fluffy, but this one challenges me. I find myself chewing on the question. I know what I'm afraid of, that's the easy part: failure - letting others down; the opinion of others - not as much as I have been afraid, but the snake is not dead; disappointing God - really, how to only pick three? But the daydream that I could let those parts of my soul-fabric float away and be left with a new-found freedom doesn't easily resonate. I would be free to ... to what? Honestly, not one thing comes to mind! Aren't my fears the motivations that keep me doing the things I should? If I didn't fear failing as a mother, what would motivate me to put my all into my kids? Doesn't fear of God evoke my obedience to Him? If I didn't have fear, what would I have? Freedom? Freedom to what?? Love...? "Perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." John 4:18
"There is so much fear here." She meant this town, she newly arrived from the big city so unlike our little metropolis - but there was a deeper meaning for me. The fearful attributes of the town as a whole describe me quite accurately as an individual.
And then a conversation with the wise daughter, making more and more grown-up decisions all the time. She asks about the work of motherhood (she the second mother to this whole brood!), and we discuss, and her comment off-handedly springs forth, "But you are never happy, Mom!" I flinch. She sees and tries to retract it, rephrase it, repackage it; but the truth refuses to be brushed away. Is that how she sees me? How they see me? After all the years of reading the Gifts book and following the blogs and writing the lists - to one thousand and beyond? I printed the words and taped them to walls, reminders to choose and to breathe and to let God. But she says it didn't "work" - that the joy I sought might have been poured in, but it isn't seeping out. Why not?
And so I started a quest to find my joy; my happy; my self, perhaps. I had perused books whose authors had done it. It seems you take a pilgrimage somewhere or cook through a book in a year or take a new job overseas - and somehow happiness is waiting at the end. Is that the way? Perhaps, since I didn't seem to have found it my way... but where should I go or what would I cook or where could I possible go (am I supposed to take the eight or leave them to find their own way?)? And so I just write down my thoughts and pray and the start the journal that promises to cure my perfectionism in 60 artistic pages. But I don't think I have found anything yet.
I absently pull a journal off the shelf one morning, a journal filled with the words and prayers and lessons from a year long past. And I skim the entries and the tears well up as I find the heart cries of the yesteryear the same cries I wrestle to express today. Why the same lessons? Why the same prayers for the purpose and the motivation and the joy? Why am I still here? What is the super-strength adhesive that keeps me in this place?
Fear? That word again... I thought the fears moved me, that they drove me forward to escape their dreadful teeth. But perhaps only my head is spinning, giving the illusion of rapid motion, when in truth, I am stuck. Rooted to this spot. Rooted...in fear.
But what if the fantasy balloons could take away the looming fears - what would be left behind? Perhaps another fear should go at the top of the list - the fear of being without fear! Of being fear less! But what if fear did die and love was resurrected in its place? What if? If grace is greater than sin, shouldn't love be greater than fear? Wouldn't that "greatness" motivate me to actions beyond what I could ask or think to be possible. Isn't the life after resurrection so beyond comparison with the life before death. "Death is the nonnegotiable prerequisite to resurrection." Fear must die for the fruits of love to be born.
Great God and Father, I want to choose love. But how? How to love and speak the love when I am as fluent as the newborn?
He speaks: "Keep reading..."
"In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
"We love because He first loved us."
I don't have to know the language, because He does. I don't have to know how to do because He will do. He always goes first - in the life I must life, in the death I must die, to the resurrection I must have, to the love I must give.
He loves me. So I can love.
Fearlessly...
and His joy will be my strength.
and His strength will be my joy.
Fear is easily my biggest struggle, my greatest sin. I seem to always return to it and white knuckling it even after I thought I'd left it at the cross.
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