From Fear to Faith #4

From the time I entered First Grade and all through the school years I searched for a relationship with God through ritualistic prayers.  I do know that I expected answers to my prayers, but my expectations were based on the 'miraculous' lives of the 'saints' introduced by my teaching nuns.  As I knelt in prayer in front of statues, I remember thinking that if one would just blink an eye at me it would confirm my close relationship with them.  However, I was merely reciting memorized stanzas – verses taken from scripture, but out of due time and context.
Instead of those memorized prayers drilled into me, there were times that I cried out to 'Jesus' with my own words, even though answers were not forthcoming.  Often when I petitioned God it was for something I just knew I was being tested about and was determined to stand the test in a way pleasing to God and to the world around me.
Lacking the training and inclination to do so, God sure never got the thanks and praise for anything I considered answered prayer, EXCEPT for the blessing of my two children.
As the influence of the ten commandments steered my life, another fear governed.  With hindsight it is quite clear that my nightly prayers were offered in fear that if I laid my head on the pillow without reciting them I would surely die in the night and go to hell.
That same kind of fear, for some reason, did not rule when we sat down to dinner in our home.  The memorized prayer for before meals was only offered on special occasions – large holiday dinners at Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas, when it was usual for aunts, uncles or Grandfather to dine with us.  For some reason it wasn't as important to recite the "after meals" prayer though each of us had been taught it.
There was another kind of fear in my life also.  The fear that gripped me when one of my brothers started fighting with my other brother.  It was the same fear that gripped me when my father was angry with my mother and  compared in intensity with the fear of that approaching bus as I stumbled to get up from the icy roadway.  I frequented the confessional for fear an un-confessed sin would send me to hell if I waited too long.  I feared also the priest who would scold loud enough for everyone to hear if I dared to miss a Sunday mass.
Yes, there was a lot of fear in my life.  
But did fear get me where I desired to be in my relationship with God?

Fear to Faith Part 3

We lived only six doors from the front door of the Junior High School I was enrolled in for 7th grade.  Now I had a "home room" teacher and a teacher for all the different subjects.  My homeroom teacher was also my music teacher, who quickly noted that I was a very shy student and had to be encouraged to join the chorus.  She had tested me and noted that I could hold a note on key while sitting next to a different voice type.  That was the beginning of learning to deal with fear myself, as we often had to sing a part alone so she could know we were doing it right.
Shy, I said.  I was so shy that when encountering someone in the hallway I did not know well, especially a teacher, I looked away so as not to have to speak.  Although I did not choose my friends for their looks, I very much appreciated pretty faces as was the case with my cooking teacher.  She had asked me to stay after class one day in order to speak with me.  Oh boy!  My mind searched, while my heart raced, for something I might be in trouble for, but I could not find out what it was all about until after class.  That's when I learned that teacher had been offended by my avoiding her in the hall.  When I explained it was simply because of my shyness, she was very kind in encouraging me not to be fearful of speaking.
It was much easier to get through the three years at Junior High after that incident.  It helped also to be encouraged by my music teacher/homeroom teacher, (who knew my mother).  She had encouraged me to join the Girls Chorus and also the Choir and that helped my shyness somewhat.
However, a change of school buildings when entering High School revealed my shyness was not completely gone because my music teacher, who had also transferred to the same High School in the same year, wondered why I was not in her class.  Upon finding that I did not know how to get into the class or even whether I qualified, she offered to take care of it for me and did, so again I was in both the Chorus and the Choir.
The rest of my classes consisted of the usual Readin', 'Riting and 'Rithmetic' - English, History and Math along with Shorthand and Bookkeeping.  I had wanted to be a teacher or a nurse but my mother said Daddy wanted me to be his helper and I should take business courses to prepare for that, and I did.  But Daddy died in my senior year and my first job was as a dental assistant for $25 per week.  And it was not long after that I did end up in the business world where I have been most of my life.
This is about fear and its affect on my life.  More to come.