when no one else can believe it for me

We were back at a church we love this past Sunday. I'm a long-road Anglican, winding my way along a path from childhood and pink dresses at First Communion to that St. Michael and All Angels confirmation, a swirl of the Spirit descending and those words, this is a new anointing, my daughter. This particular church, where the light spills in across the altar, where the choir and the electric organ sing bold to hymn and spiritual alike, where there sits this beautiful banner I stare at every time I go in - yellow, gold, that proclaims: Yours is the glory, Risen Conquering Son. is where I first saw my husband in the midst of being deeply and irrevocably in love with God. This is where I learned that there are ways of being traditional that sing spirituals and pray for the Spirit to come and fall upon us. This is, in short, where I relearned how to encounter the Lord Jesus.On Sunday the pastor preached on fear.On Sunday, Jesus came and sat down beside me.We sat together, my eyes on my hands, hearing what by now feels so familiar - that anxiety is not our nature, that we are fearful from the first moment of disobedience, that perfect love, who is the person of Jesus, casts out fear. And you all know, in your journey with this rambling heart, that I am acquainted with fear. I've lived and wandered inside it often. It's the kind of dark where my eyes adjust quickly, my adrenaline kicks in, I feel my way through the blackness and so often think I'm doing just fine.And you all know that I've been thinking about that a lot. I keep writing about it. I'd say it was some kind of theme or meditation for the season, but I think it's more likely that God is content to dwell with us where our hearts most often go to hide from Him, and so He waits for us, comes out into the dark after us, beckons us into the midst of His very self.So here we are, me and Jesus, and I'm counting the invisible threads in my skirt and I'm hearing again that Jesus will cast out fear, I am hearing that the Holy Spirit lives in me, I am hearing, I am hearing... Jesus, just the stillness of Jesus, is near me.Then the pastor says, "I cannot believe this for you."I bristle at the thought. Aren't we carrying each other? When the road is long and we are weary aren't we leaning hard on the faith of each other, on the promises kept generation to generation, of the stories others tell us when we cannot tell ourselves?But then there is this moment, where I think about it again. I close my eyes, stop counting the threads.Jesus desires relationship with me. Me, without helpful scaffolding or hiding behind the true things someone else has said. And having faith isn't just assenting to what someone smarter has said. Jesus doesn't desire my agreement with someone else. He is too in love with the being of me to want less than my self. My whole self. My whole self, believing.I do believe we should lean on each other. I believe we should carry each other. Oh, but how we must believe this without hiding from the nearness of God to each of us, in the just-us-ness of our being?I told my mother once I was doing something because of the lightness of me. I think God's answer to that question, the one we keep asking, the one we keep hiding from, the one not about God's goodness or qualities or cosmic salvation or any of that, but just the one about how God loves -because of the being of you. Because of the you that is so gorgeously alive. And you are enough of a reason for all the nearness of God. It is our whole self that must believe. It is our whole self, believing, that God is desperately in love with.That kind of love is so particular, no one else can believe it for us. We have to believe it, too.Love,hilary