Re-parenting Ourselves in Grace

Some time ago I came across this brilliant passage from St. Gregory of Nyssa (from a homily on Ecclesiastes). He says: 

We are in a sense our own parents, and we give birth to ourselves by our own free choice of what is good. Such a choice becomes possible for us when we have received God into ourselves and have become children of God, children of the Most High. On the other hand, if what the Apostle calls the form of Christ has not been produced in us, we abort ourselves. The man of God must reach maturity.

 

There is much said about healing the inner child, and this is not a modern idea. Conversion is in fact a process of evangelizing all that is within us. This includes the parts of ourselves who learned to respond to the world around us in ways that were not informed by grace but rather by age-appropriate protective nature. Someone shouts; we fear and we hide. This is not an evil response for a child; it is a natural response. It will impede our human and spiritual maturity if we continue to this behavior on repeat, without reflection upon our reflexive actions. 

But when we have received God into ourselves, wisdom does not go chasing after responses of fear as some kind of evidence that we are being attacked by Satan. Wisdom consults humility, and reviews where we learned to fear and hide. We sit calmly in the presence of God, asking the Holy Spirit to give us light that reveals our need. And when we find the scared child, we befriend him and introduce him to the Lord, who is here now to face the shouter together, and asking for the child's trust to do so, and to hand over this fear to the Lord for healing. 

And we repeat in all the areas where we need to choose the Lord. 

"Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."  (Mt. 18:3)