A comment on FB I wrote a year ago:

Some years ago, a preacher from Texas rocked my world with a series of lessons that — although I argued with him vehemently at first — ultimately ushered me into what we dubbed my “fall TO grace”. I’d been trapped in quite some legalistic system and lifestyle, a lot of it my own creation.

He kept cautioning me that the goal was not merely freedom FROM but freedom TO. I was thinking about this recently. St. Paul, of course, had things to say about freedom not being about falling into the trap of licentiousness. But for years, free as I was from that former legalism, I knew I was missing something.

I kept musing… “freedom TO…” what? I really think Byzantine Catholicism/Christianity has the answer in the whole concept of theosis and the idea of becoming most fully human when we become who God created us to be. From the outside looking in, someone might think I’m trapped in some system of church attendance and going through all sorts of motions and having to confess to a priest — and there are people in my life who simply don’t get it when I try to explain how healing and freeing all of this is. I don’t HAVE to, I GET to — and until I began living it myself, I never would have believed it either.

Funny thing. I spent my early 60’s painfully burying lifelong hopes and dreams. Believe it or not, I’d looked forward to and imagined this season of my life since I was a little kid, down to some incredible detail. (What can I say? I was a weird kid.) It was a devastating series of blows, a sort of death upon death, to realize that none of that would ever happen. I felt like I was emerging from the ashes of almost everything that mattered to me.

This side of all that death, and while still grieving the deaths of my parents, I can honestly say that some of those dreams are being reborn, even better than I could have possibly imagined.

Sometimes I find myself, in the midst of reflection or prayer, telling God, “This all seems too good to be true… but it is.” A lot of those moments come during the Divine Liturgy or during some other prayers of the Church. My “little life” — which to anyone else probably looks mundane and boring and restricted — has become such a path of freedom and joy and fulfillment, even when it’s rocky and difficult.

Why? Because I’m being healed. Because the Sacrament of Confession/Reconciliation is so powerful that it did, in one fell swoop, what years of hard work with a really good therapist couldn’t even do. It healed parts of me that I didn’t even know needed healing. That would be enough, but there’s more. Because I don’t have to try to reinvent the wheel or come up with my own version of Christianity but can glean from 2,000 years of wisdom from the Church. Frankly, I’m not that smart or learned, so I need people a lot wiser — and especially further along in holiness. Because prayer really does form belief and, ultimately, forms our very way of living. Because I’m being freed from myself and TO an intimacy with the Triune God that I never thought possible.

Because God wooed me and pursued me. Me, despite everything! And I’ve started finally saying yes instead of running away.