Sunday, September 13, 2009

Desperately seeking safety

Lately, I've found myself wondering about the quality of decisions I made earlier in life and I cannot decide whether or not I would have been able to make other choices. I was not safe as a child or a teenager, but usually not because of my own choices. In retrospect, I tried hard to make safer choices, but they didn't always work out entirely as planned. Imagine that, a person's best laid plans don't work out!

Safety is a rather elusive commodity that is subject to the demand curve and our human foibles. And the human foibles of others. It's perplexing to me, a safety seeker, the existence of the human inclination towards risk taking. And, it is the most frustrating thing about raising teenagers and watching my young adult children move on with their lives. No risk equals little or no growth. Too much risky behavior equals little or no growth, damage or even destruction.

Finally, I've managed to carve out what feels like a much higher level of safety physically, financially, and emotionally. But I don't feel safe spiritually. I feel surrounded and alone too often. Reading this I know what the answers are to remedy this void of spiritual safety, yet I've let the expediencies of the moment control.

Scriptural role models abound. Moroni moves me the most because he was so physically alone and clearly at times felt spiritually alone. And, he was not safe physically. I love the change in his perspective as he writes and fulfills his calling. It becomes ever clearer that even though he is alone in an unsafe environment, he has found spiritual safety and was not spiritually alone.

I want the same.

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