There are two related wounds that all or most of us experience: the fear of abandonment, and the fear of engulfment. In other words, we fear being unseen, lost, not held in our hearts, we want to be existentially embraced by another. Yet, we also desire to be free, not swallowed up by another’s emotional neediness; we fear losing our individuality and freedom, our independence.
Two general truths are helpful in reframing this paradox:
1) There is no created reality that can really give me all that my heart desires, and there is no created reality that can take anything away from me. So I need not be lost in the frenzy of seeking, nor in the despair of protecting myself.
2) in a life of prayer and ongoing conversion of heart one may come to know that it is only God who offers an existential embrace which is also total freedom for me. The Divine embrace is freedom. Love casts out fear.
In other words, relinquishing my will to God does not put me at risk of being at the mercy of a capricious or erratic sovereign, nor does it mean that I, the essential I, will get swallowed up or subsumed and therefore lose who God has created me to be. Nothing that is Not God can do these things, and God will not.
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