REVISITING OUR BELIEFS ABOUT FEAR AND ANXIETY.
I have struggled with anxiety most of my adult life. It didn’t start until my first child was born, but in those early years it was the constant voice in my head. The what-ifs were loud and unrelenting, leading to lack of sleep, constant worry, and a diagnosed stress ulcer at the age of 24.
When I first began mentioning my anxiety to a group of women I was in a study with, they initially assured me that this was a normal “new mom” experience, but as the weeks passed and our relationship grew, I began to unpack more of what this looked like in my world. It quickly became evident that the length and depth of my fear and anxiety episodes (can they really be called episodes when they happen all day every day) were significantly more that the other “new mom anxiety” experiences of my group and we prayed together for wisdom, healing and faith.
We moved shortly afterwards, and on my own in a new city/state, I had to walk the path of trusting God with things I couldn’t control. Turning all the unknowns and the fears over to Him, praying to quiet my fears, asking Jesus to heal my heart. It was a regular exercise and healing did come!
As the years passed, my moments of extreme anxiety grew further and further apart, and my assessment would have been that I replaced fear with faith.
So I spent years telling myself that when anxiety surfaced I was lacking faith. But as I grew and matured in my walk with Jesus it wasn’t always that simple.
Despite the years of steadily growing faith, the kind of faith that is formed in seeing God show up over and over again, the kind of faith that is forged in the fire, when God steps in and walks through it with us instead of just removing it, seasons of significant change and unknowns still cause my anxiety to surface. I then I recently heard this…
“If you struggle with anxiety, you actually have capacity for deep faith – it’s just pointed in the wrong direction.”
Read that again.
You see, faith is believing the unseen. Fear and anxiety are also caused by believing the unseen. The difference is which kingdom we are focused on. My prayer and surrender to God in my anxiety aren’t about growing my faith, they are about refocusing my attention. I didn’t lose faith, I lost focus.
Friends, if you struggle with fear and anxiety and somewhere along the way you have either decided yourself or have been told that you lack faith, can I offer some truth? You have capacity for great faith, you are not lacking in ability or belief. Spend some time with Jesus, offer Him the things you are clinging to. Can you see the kingdom of God in your circumstances? Ask Him to help you refocus.