Love vs. Fear

'Perfect Love casts out fear"

It's one of those sayings you've always heard and acknowledged as true but somehow, inside your head or deep in your heart or somewhere in your soul, you have never realized the truth of the matter.  There is no room for fear in the presence of Perfect Love.  That being said, all our mortal loves are certainly imperfect, no matter how sublime, so don't freak out if a little fear sneaks into your relationships every now and again, it's part of our fallen and broken reality.  I grew up with the opposite however: Perfect Fear casts out love.  I've spent all these years trying to understand Love, knowing what it was on paper but never in practice.  I don't know what it means to be loved unconditionally, no matter what you do (or don't) or who you are (or aren't), at least as a parent should love a child.  At my house, fear was the rule rather than the exception.

Today I burned the biscuits I was making for lunch and then I went and burned the eggs too (I've never burned eggs before!).  Enter panic mode (probably an anxiety attack).  At my house you got in trouble when things were perfect, when things were bad...well, we won't go there.  So now I'm all grown up with a home and family of my own.  I understand that kids make mistakes and are well, kids, and I love them anyway and don't punish them for accidents and carelessness but somehow I can't apply that to myself.  I don't understand that it's okay to make mistakes, that the important people in my life won't quit loving because I screwed up.  I'm programmed that nobody loves me when things are going great, how much less when anything goes wrong?  Fear was a way of life, so much so that I didn't even know it was an issue; it was just how things were, it was normal.

But you know what?  I didn't get into trouble, nobody quit loving me, and while lunch was not as I had planned it, it was okay and now we can laugh about it.  We never laughed or even smiled at my house.  We never celebrated anything.  You never heard 'good job' or 'I'm proud of you.'  Hugs didn't happen.  I'm changing all that and it's wonderful, except I need to learn to apply it to myself as well as to everybody else.  What am I afraid of?  Old ghosts?  I know in my head that things are okay, but my heart is still skeptical at times, but it's warming to the idea.  Perfect Love, how do I even begin to wrap my mind around that idea if imperfect love is a stretch for my feeble imagination?  And it's for me, and you!