Positively (Im)perfect

ST.  JUDE  SIDE  CHAPEL  |  ST.  PATRICK'S  CATHEDRAL 10.30.17 I got stopped dead in my tracks this morning while listening to this line from the First Reading {Romans 8:15}:  “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into...”  ...and just as my brain tried to autocorrect the last word to “sin,” I heard a different word proclaimed, the very word my soul drags around like a weight just as heavy as sin: “fear.”  This verse, as you might know if you recognize it, goes on to tell us about our spirit of adoption in God. The one that invites—no, compels—us to call Him Abba. Daddy.  And words of the Bethel Music hymn ripped through me— I’m no longer a slave to fear // I am a child of God  I could almost hear God’s gentle chuckle. Because no matter how often I circle around it, no matter how much I stretch my spirit, no matter how hard I try and fail to wrap my mind around this Father-daughter relationship, He is lovingly, patiently, relentless in

Fear. In this life, it seems just as inescapable as suffering. Both have long been my unwelcome companions, but it dawned on me recently that while suffering is a hallmark of the Christian life, fear and anxiety are decidedly not . The Word tells us in a thousand different ways to seek peace, to not let our hearts be troubled, that worrying won't add a single second to our lifespan. It also tell us to take up our cross in union with Christ's cross, and to rejoice in our sufferings--not out of some twisted masochism, but specifically for the fruit they will bear, and because they are nothing compared to the glory of the Kingdom that awaits. I think we all clamor to agree with this wisdom, even pressure ourselves to snap our fingers and be at the endstate already, without acknowledging the necessary process of learning how to get there. For the longest time I both ran from my cross and treated anxiety as something I could just ignore away, instead of learning to ackno