I’ve been struggling with anxiety lately. Although my ever-evolving relationship with Jesus has freed me from a lifetime of anxiety attacks and debilitating fear over the course of the past twenty-five years,
I still get afraid.
The irony of my latest battle with anxiety is I’ve been experiencing an unusually sweet closeness to the Lord recently. I hate and don’t understand why and how fear can infiltrate God’s powerful nearness, but I suppose it has to do with me being human.
Being a human loved by God doesn’t exempt me from suffering. Being a Christian is almost as much about failure and pain as it is about victory and joy. And although I know I cannot appreciate or recognize the latter without enduring the former, I’ve been struggling.
But the beautiful “advantage” of being God’s child, is learning (and re-learning) that His presence is better than His presents. The gift of being a Christian human who’s subject to suffering is experiencing the delight, compassion, and nearness of God even when our pain remains. But how? How do we experience His presence tangibly enough to
Sustain us in our suffering?
Initially, I didn’t. I was drowning and overwhelmed by my anxiety. But eventually, I began telling myself Truth that I didn’t feel or fully believe. At 2 in the morning, repeating 2 Timothy 1:7, that God hasn’t given me a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and sound mind, eventually helped me fall asleep despite the pit in my stomach. Naming throughout the day whatever I could think of that was “true, right…excellent and praiseworthy” (Philippians 4:8), shifted my thoughts away from consuming worst-case scenarios to peace-filled realities in front of me.
I also had to obey. I resisted Googling symptoms and solutions. When I’d catch myself thinking fearful things, I’d have to stop myself and instead to ask God to help me believe He’s loving and trustworthy. Although I must continually do these things (because my brain reverts so easily to fear), His presence is sustaining me in my suffering. And the peace I’m finding there makes returning to Him easier and sweeter,
Again and again.
