Fear of backwards

Every three months I have to go to the doctor for a "meds check." This is where my blood is drawn and I am weighed and my blood pressure taken. Usually it is the P.A. who comes in, asks me some perfunctory questions about "how I'm doing," and then renews my medication for the next few months.

If I have done well in terms of losing weight, I usually leave feeling pretty good. But lately I've felt the anxiety coming on about this appointment, anxiety that tries to convince me of what think I know: that I haven't had as much progress during the past couple of months as I had prior to my last checkup. That, perhaps, I have even gone a bit backwards.

i hear the sound
of ice melting off
fences \ delicious /
but still carry cold
in my wet socks

Protestant tradition contains this odd (for me) concept of backsliding. The idea is that you make a mistake you might know is wrong, but don't see as a big deal, and before you know it, you have fallen back on old patterns and are far from God. And to a degree, that is what this feeling is like. But there is something else here I can't really describe because I cannot pinpoint a decision or event bringing on this--shall I call it fear?

I can't go back. I've left that place just long enough to remember with horror the feeling of being so lost, so hopeless. I don't know if I can, but I must try to fight to keep what's left of me alive.

Meditating on "The Lord's Prayer," find myself a little baffled by phrases I used to think I comprehended. I don't know, for all my study, what "your kingdom come" means. But I do know, without knowledge, that when it happens, all the rent places, all that is torn and seemingly forever broken in me, will no longer be.