When I was a young girl in Catholic school, I was terrified of Hell.\u00a0 (I\u2019m still terrified of Hell, but I was preoccupied with my fear as a young girl.)\u00a0 I had countless nightmares about burning lakes of fire and coming face to face with the devil himself.\u00a0 For a long time when I was young, it was the fear of burning that motivated me to be good.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t love of God or my parents, but a desire to avoid going \u201cthe other way.\u201d<\/p>\n
I eventually confided my fears to a priest who was a friend of our family.\u00a0 I\u2019ll remember forever the look on his face in the confessional as I cried out my fear to him.\u00a0 (It was face to face, no partition.\u00a0 It was the 80s.)\u00a0 He smiled at me and said that while being good was good, doing it to avoid burning was not the right motivation.\u00a0 Our resolve runs out when it\u2019s motivated by fear, but if we do something for love we can do it forever.<\/p>\n
Last week my typical pregnancy heartburn returned with a vengeance.\u00a0 Sugar or carbs will trigger an instant burning in my chest.\u00a0 It\u2019s horrible and painful and every time I swear that I will never do it again.\u00a0 I return to an Atkins-like carb-free diet and the pain disappears.\u00a0 Eventually the fear recedes and chocolate chip cookies or homemade bread appear in my kitchen.\u00a0 My resolve weakens, my mouth waters and before I know it, my chest is on fire again.<\/p>\n
The pain from carbs is close to instant, and yet I can\u2019t resist it no matter how hard I try.\u00a0 I summon all my resolve, and then find myself nibbling thoughtlessly as I make dinner.\u00a0 The taste is too good and pleasurable for me to give up completely, and the fear of fire is too weak.<\/p>\n
Fear can\u2019t motivate us to change our habits forever, but love can.<\/p>\n
Sin is no different from craving that piece of chocolate cake.\u00a0 If it tasted disgusting there would be no temptation at all.\u00a0 It is the momentary pleasure, the remembered attraction which overwhelms our fear of fire and lures us in.\u00a0 The devil is no fool.\u00a0 He knows our weaknesses and plays into them.<\/p>\n
My eldest daughter asked me yesterday, \u201cThe carbs and sugars hurt you, but you still eat them.\u00a0 If they were bad for the baby would you give them up?\u201d\u00a0 Of course, I told her, I love the baby.\u00a0 \u201cBut you don\u2019t love yourself?\u201d\u00a0 I simply sat dumbfounded by her question.\u00a0 If I were my child I would do a better job of protecting me.<\/p>\n
I try not to sin because I love God and because I love the people my sin would harm.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to hurt anyone, and so I pray and ask for help with my areas of weakness.\u00a0 I work and pray on it daily.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never asked anyone in my family to help me deal with the physical side effects of pregnancy.\u00a0 I choose to carry this burden alone.\u00a0 Why shouldn\u2019t I ask them for help?\u00a0 They could be the food conscience I have obviously not formed well in myself.\u00a0 Because these kids can nag like nobody\u2019s business.\u00a0 I just have never wanted to ask the whole family to change the way they eat for me.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen that as somehow selfish, which is ridiculous.<\/p>\n
The food on my table is something which is completely within my control.\u00a0 I am the master of the pantry, and yet I still fail daily to avoid temptation and the suffering which results from it.\u00a0 How much more difficult it is to maintain my fear of the fires of Hell.\u00a0 The truth of it all is that I am a weak human being and am not so great at avoiding temptation.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t even avoid the bite of doughnut my 2 year old offered me this morning.\u00a0 Temptation doesn\u2019t come in ugly packaging, it comes wrapped in sweetness, covered with sprinkles and delivered with a smile.\u00a0 The trick, I think, is to know our weaknesses and avoid them at all costs (like not buying the doughnuts to begin with) and to fight our failings not with fear but with love.<\/p>\n
We have to love God, our neighbors, and ourselves.\u00a0 We have to love ourselves in a way that allows us to die to the desires of the flesh and turn consciously to the way we should go.\u00a0 We need to learn to reach to God and each other in our weaknesses and ask for help.\u00a0 In asking, we are not placing a burden on other people, we are giving them a chance to love us in return.\u00a0 Whether it is the food in our pantries or the sin in our hearts, the temptation is the same, and the weakness is the same.\u00a0 The burning is not inevitable.\u00a0 We just have to remember where to turn for help.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was a young girl in Catholic school, I was terrified of Hell.\u00a0 (I\u2019m still terrified of Hell, but I was preoccupied with my fear as a young girl.)\u00a0 I had countless nightmares about burning lakes of fire and coming face to face with the devil himself.\u00a0 For a long time when I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n