I want to try to write a spiritual reflection every week, and this week is hard. I’m struggling with Deep Questions, torn between writing about idolatry, about my attempts to be true to God and God alone – whatever this means. I’m struggling with the difference: what it means to be afraid of someone as opposed to fearing for them.

Some fear is rational.

I don’t fear God, because I know God will never hurt me. God understands me in a way no one else seems to. I trust God to save everything and everyone that should be saved – and to work hard alongside me to that end. That’s my mission, the only thing that matters to me in this world.

Other people? I fear them – reasonably so. People break your heart. I’ve learned – and keep learning: don’t idolize men or women or pastors or religions or my idea of God. Those things will fail. Everything and everyone else may be good for a while – but these things aren’t actually God.

Trust in God, because God will never fail. Everything else fails. God alone never does.

Every religion I’ve ever met has tried to add something on to this. And I’ve wanted to believe, so much. But guess what? Nothing else in heaven or earth can withstand the flames of time and change and real life.

That’s why other people scare me. I am afraid of what will happen, of what they will do, of what I will watch them do. There’s forgiveness and mercy – but then there’s saying no to cruelty and pride.

I don’t perfectly love anyone, not the way I love God. I trust God to never deliberately hurt me, never to cast me down to prove that I’m inferior to Him. God knows who God is and who I am. God knows who each of us really are, inside.

I’m working on trusting myself, perfectly loving myself, perfectly knowing myself.

Thing is, I’m not entirely sure what that kind of life is like, who and what is in it. That’s another kind of fear: the fear of the unknown. I’m afraid that love alone leaves me as just another wandering, itinerant Christian, one who shows up from time to time, who tries to show up when she promises to, who tries not to make too many promises because God knows, right?

Maybe that’s how this should work. Maybe that’s how it has to work. Love is not something to tame, to keep trapped in a box. Love is something free – and so am I. So are we. Sometimes, freedom is lonely. But every now and again, I’m reminded – just how not alone I am, because when you’re standing with God alone, you are never alone.

Father, be me my witness. Yeshua, be my witness. Your daughter and your bride cries out to you. I have never forgotten you. Don’t forget me. I need you. And I have no idea what to do here. Doing the best I can with the information and resources that I have – as You know I always have – every moment of my life. Every. Moment.