I fell in love with a God I’d first learned to fear. In the Reformed tradition, knowing oneself to be chosen (and loved) by a God of infinite power means having nothing else to fear. Being chosen, adopted out of abject poverty as a son or daughter of the King, gives one an extraordinary sense of self, a freedom to move through the world with fearless abandon. In my upbringing, Calvinist images of royalty were oddly juxtaposed with notions of undeserving insignificance.14 To be chosen and loved was everything.
