Ambush

In Chapter 7 of J. D. Vance's book Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, he is talking about the birth of his son Ewan. He's talking about parenting advice fads, and so on. Then there is this:

"I felt one emotion above all others: fear. The way that I'd grown up had imparted a sense of fatalism. A despair that the worst parts of my past would define me." 

I can relate to that, in my own small way. An imparted sense of fatalism. Of never living up to expectations or my "great potential" as seen by others. Of always being measured and found wanting. 

Maybe I was born with an overactive flight response, and then grew up with no way to flee?

Childhood memories are crowded with episides of being told -- after the fact -- that yes, there had been expectations, that I had been told to do such and such (which I never remembered) and now it's judgment time and the verdict is YOU FAIL. I'm not blaming anybody, that's just what/who I was/am.

But then in the next paragraph after the Vance quote above, we read, "...perhaps grace was God making the impossible possible, but on His time, not ours." This is a remedy for the fatalism.

So I keep working on it. In the meantime, do excuse my reluctance about entering yet another ravine. It's just that I've been ambushed so many times.

As they used to say in the 1970s, "Please be patient, God is not finished with me yet."