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?