The Fear Factor

No more than i can take credit for Michelangelo's paintings, can I take credit for the creation, design and health of my children. And yet, based on the fear that so easily grips me, I live as though they were made by me and could not be loved more by anyone else than I.  It is a quiet, profound lie that the enemy of my soul whispers without me even noticing, except when I hear or read of young children walking through the valley of the shadow of death. As the accounts of some one's son or daughter the same age as mine, battling a deadly cancer reach my awareness, I immediately am attacked with a fear that is embarrassingly invasive...embarrassingly due to years of the proven faithfulness of God and the quickness with which I invite it into my conscience.

His love of my children, NO MATTER the course they travel in their lives, surpasses my own by light years. I can only imagine the way in which this belief is tested upon traveling such dark waters with one's child, as so many parents have and are doing. Yet, in reading some of their accounts, He provides reminders that they are not alone. He shows them His loving care amidst the pain.

 He loves our children infinitely beyond all we are able to feel, beyond the boundaries of our weak understanding of the magnitude of force behind the word "LOVE".

Becoming a mother has brought to life vices that weren't so prominent before...such as a propensity to create a dramatic, false reality within seconds and live hunkered down by it's heavy possibilities. I forgo the grace that was given to me for TODAY (now) and place myself in an unknown FUTURE and stupidly hyperventilate at the lack of grace that is only reserved for if and when.

I leave you with a few excerpts of conversations between Mack and Jesus, taken from one of my favorite works of fiction (with a tremendous amount of truth to be taken from it), The Shack, by William Young.

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Jesus (in response to Mack’s question about why he spends a great deal of time worrying about the future): “It is your desperate attempt to get some control over something you can’t. It is impossible for you to take power over the future because it isn’t even real, nor will it ever be real. You try and play God, imagining the evil that you fear becoming reality, and then you try and make plans and contingencies to avoid what you fear.”

Mack: “Why do I have so much fear in my life?”

Jesus: “Because you don’t believe. You don’t know that we love you. The person who lives by their fears will not find freedom in my love… to the degree that those fears have a place in your life, you neither believe that I am good nor know deep in your heart that I love you. You sing about it; you talk about it, but you don’t know it” (142).

"There are millions of reasons to allow pain and hurt and suffering rather than to eradicate them, but most of these reasons can only be understood within each person’s story. I am not evil. You are the ones who embrace fear and pain and power and rights so readily in your relationships. But your choices are not stronger than my purposes, and I will use every choice you make for the ultimate good and the most loving outcome."