When my phone rings and the screen shows the name of my boss (Hi, Ted) or even certain friends, a small sensation arises in me that years of prayer and therapy have not fully assuaged. 

The feeling is that of a schoolboy whose name has just been announced over the loudspeaker: Brian Morykon, please report to the principal’s office. Some little part of me braces for a bitter pill, for bad news, for being called out. It hardly needs to be said that neither Ted nor my friends have done a single thing to substantiate my premonition, and answering the phone dispels the fear like a mist. Still, the feeling is there, so I notice it but pay it little respect. 

A similar foreboding may visit me when my attention has been absent from God for any length of time. If I walk by my prayer chair, and remember it has sat unoccupied for several days, I am haunted by a vague and irrational fear that God awaits me there with a disappointed face and a devastating list of things I’ve done and left undone.

The fear is irrational because it’s disproved by decades of my own experience with God and, more importantly, by the words and wounds of our Lord.

You can chalk some of this fear up to my particular wiring. Not everyone, I’m told, lives with a raving inner critic. But I’ve heard enough stories to know I’m not alone. All kinds of people are kept from coming to God by the devilish idea that God wants something from us that we cannot give, and something for us other than our complete wholeness, freedom, and joy.

We may also keep our distance from God because we, like Adam in the garden, are hiding and afraid of being seen. Rationally, we know God already knows where we are and sees every nook of our naked soul. Maybe it’s that we don’t want to see ourselves. Or maybe we don’t want to let go of some sweetly destructive habit. Or we could be like the boy-turned-dragon in Narnia who wants his scales removed but is slow to approach the razor-sharp compassion of a very large Lion.

Whatever the reasons, I’ve found that when I finally come and let myself be seen, and allow God to do with me whatever God will, I am without fail given something better than what I was reaching for on my own. God welcomes me with an almost unbearable tenderness. I find God is not a school principal who reprimands, but a Father who forgives, a Brother who understands, a Counselor who guides. And through receiving that forgiveness, understanding, and guidance, my focus can move from self to God and with God to others.