The Little Foxes of Fear

The fear of rejection caused me to isolate myself in early 2005 after Rich was received into the Catholic Church. By the following year, that fear had become a cautious timidity. I warily explored the Mass and Catholic Christianity, trying to ignore the cultural cautions of my Protestant roots. Yet even as I found Jesus so real in the Eucharist, I was plagued by the anxious whirring of the stress of being different – something I was reminded of each Sunday.

Why was I so bothered by this reality? I didn’t know. However, I was constantly reminded that no matter how often I attended Mass or met with the members of the home Bible study, I was forever out of step. I realized I would never quite be accepted within the Catholic culture. I would always feel alien.

It was an uncomfortable place to be.

Yet all the while, Jesus tried to point me toward Himself and His peace.

As I read the devotional book, My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers, I came across this entry, “Is the grace of His ministering life being worked out through you in your home, your business, and in your circle of friends? Have you been wondering why you are going through certain circumstances? In fact, it is not that you have to go through them. It is because of your relationship with the Son of God who comes, through the providential will of His Father, into your life. You must allow Him to have His way with you, staying in perfect oneness with Him.”

Anxiety, like the little foxes that spoil the vines, had turned my heart from the graces of Christ’s love to a self-ward dwelling on my difficulties.

Even when the Holy Spirit pointed me aright with whispers that the journey of faith often leads through difficult times, I ignored Him. I let the social and cultural stresses I experienced tempt me to be full of worry. Yet, despite my negative responses to Christ’s gentle call, somehow He used my anxiety to prod me toward His loving embrace.

During the following few months, it slowly dawned on me that my sense of alienation was rooted not in my present, but in my past. I had thought I’d left those long forgotten days of alienation behind.

In the summer of 1952, before I turned five, I discovered what it meant to be a social oddity. My sister had several episodes of epileptic seizures which often left her unresponsive, and sometimes without respirations for extended periods. I remember my mother frantically calling the fire department (who acted also as paramedics) each time Jan had an episode. Meanwhile, I was sent across the street to stay out of the firemen’s way. From there I would watch our living room window hoping to see the men who were trying to revive my sister. Standing around me were neighbors from the other apartment houses who, for reasons I still do not understand, berated my mother and accused her of calling the fire department so often because she was seeking attention for herself. Even my best friend’s mother found fault with us. She was a Christian Scientist and did not believe in sickness. When my parents rejected her idea that Jan was not really ill, and that they should stop seeking medical help for her, my friend’s mother would not let her play with me again.

Thus in 2006, as I attended the Catholic Church with Rich, I felt myself alienated once more. The experience was like jumping into the deep end of a swimming pool filled with snakes. So devastating were my memories, I panicked. Yet, Jesus was there with me in the pool among those snakes. His strong arms held onto me, as He gently encouraged me to open my eyes to His reassuring presence there with me. And slowly I realized that He was not going to leave me. He was going to help me.

I discovered later that He would do so though a series of unexpected events.

One Sunday afternoon, I was stressing over some event (which I cannot remember) from that morning’s Mass, mulling over how different I was from the rest of the congregation. I sat at our computer, trying to avoid those nagging thoughts of how useless it was to continue to attend services with Rich.

As I absently surfed the web, looking at nothing in particular, I remembered a comment someone made about Mother Angelica, the founder of Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). I had listened to Mother Angelica sometimes on the radio. I found the EWTN web address and clicked the link to the opening page. That was when I discovered Mother Angelica was recovering from a stroke. I was saddened by this and I followed the links to the prayer response page—joyful to know there was something I could do for her: I could pray. The site did not ask me if I was Protestant or Catholic. It just asked me to choose the number of prayers I would say for Mother Angelica’s healing. I typed a number and then noticed there was an option to pray a rosary.

For several months prior to this, I had been using rosary beads only to meditate on the various Mysteries (Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious, and Light). I had found this practice to be very worthwhile and spiritually fulfilling. But when I saw the option to pray a full rosary for Mother Angelica, I wondered how I would be able to do so the “Catholic” way, since much of the rosary includes the Hail Mary and other Marian prayers, which were alien to my experience as a Protestant Christian.

However, I continued to sense the Holy Spirit’s prompting to pray a rosary’s length of prayers for Mother Angelica, and I felt overwhelmed with a surety that, no matter what others might think of me, I was not a misfit, that my place with Rich in the Catholic Church was part of God’s plan for my faith journey. And in a split-second, I decided that if Catholics could say rosaries, I could too. With the click of the mouse, I committed myself to saying 365 rosaries for Mother Angelica’s health.

A moment later, anxiety gripped me. I was assaulted with any number of “what ifs” – such as, What if I am doing something terrible, using a rosary to pray? What if Catholics find out and scoff at me? What if this type of prayer is only for Catholics? What if this turns me into a Roman Catholic?

Fear can generate a long list of reasons why we should not seek to follow Christ’s leading. I ignored the “what ifs. I knew our Father in heaven is pleased when we dedicate ourselves to communicating with Him. So I set out to keep my promised prayers . . . .