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By Rachel McCracken
I am afraid I will be left alone. I sat in a staff member’s office last week and listened to those words roll off my lips and settle in the room. Yes, through many moments during my time at the Ranch, God has led me to realize this core fear of mine. It is a fear which deeply affects the way I live.
Almost nine months ago, I entered internship crippled by the thought that my sin could, and probably would, hurt the students. They already bear many scars from people in their past; I did not want to add more hurt. I am currently reading Tim Keller’s book Forgive: Why should I and how can I? While reading it, I realized my fears of hurting others and being alone were deeply connected. They were connected in self-pity.
Keller argues that we do not acknowledge the gravity of our sin against God when our motive for repentance is self-centered: I am sorry for what I did because of what it cost me. “Self-pity looks like repentance, but it is self-absorption, and that is the essence of sin,” Keller writes. “[It] arises chiefly from a fear of punishment, while true repentance arises from a consideration of God’s goodness and therefore a sense of one’s own ingratitude and lack of love” (pg. 146-147).
As I carry out my days at the Ranch as an authority figure in our students’ lives, I am often shackled by the fear of making the wrong call or wrongly acting in my heart towards the students. I am afraid of sinning. Why am I afraid to recognize that I am a sinner? Running from this reality denies a core aspect of the gospel: my need for forgiveness and grace.
Furthermore, I realized that my fear of sinning derives from my fear of hurting others, pushing them away, and being left by those I have wronged. There it is: my fear of being alone. My self-pity—my sorrow because I am afraid of how my sin could cost me—drives me to inaction. I am unwilling to acknowledge my sin and step into the freedom God offers me through repentance and grace. But praise God: He is freeing me from this.
Learning this lesson in internship has deepened my humility, my relationship with God, and my realization of the freedom I have in Him to live and serve others. God is mightily using internship and the community at the Ranch to teach me this lesson and start to free me from fear’s hold on me.