From Anxiety to Abiding: 7 Days to Peaceናሙና

In this guide, I want to explore with you where our anxiety comes from and how we can find healing and control over the anxiety that so often seems to have control over us. I invite you, each day, into your own experience, and what that experience is telling you, and then into a deeper conversation with God. This guide aims to support you in a longer journey with God, to experience healing that only He can give. I’m so glad to be with you here.

Let’s get started.

What exactly is anxiety? Most of us think of it as a survival instinct, the thing that kept you alive when a saber-toothed tiger was chasing you. But what does that have to do with us now? And someone of a faith perspective might say it’s about resistance and not letting go, not trusting, or even about a lack of faith. These explanations may make sense in our minds, but they don’t seem to be offering the relief that we so desperately need in our hearts, and in our experience of anxiety. What do we do when the anxiety will not subside, no matter how many explanations we give it?

My concept of anxiety was drastically changed when I heard Cherie and Morgan Snyder of Wild at Heart Ministries explain anxiety as the fundamental fear of being unloved.* Imagine you’re in biblical times, and you have been cast out of your community because you’re a leper. Your community sees you as unclean and untouchable. Cast out of your clan, you will face certain death—no food, maybe no water, no protection from the elements; no provision in your time of greatest need.

But let’s remember the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were also cast out, removed from the very place and the very God who gave them Life. Imagine the lack of protection they must have felt and experienced.

We are created in the image of God, just as they were (Gen. 1:27), and our anxiety has the same roots, even in modern day where there is no threat of a saber-toothed tiger. We fear that we are fundamentally unloved in our circumstances. We doubt, just as Eve did, that God will take care of us.

Perhaps it is a health diagnosis–Does God love me enough to heal me?

Maybe it is a broken relationship–Does God love me enough to bring this relationship back, to heal it?

Maybe it is a loved one who is hurting, a bill on your counter you cannot pay, or watching your child leave for school–Does God love me enough to protect me and provide for me, even in this?

It is still fundamentally about being loved.

Let us also remember that God came looking for Adam and Eve; “Where are you”, He said. He then clothed them, with what must have been a painful sacrifice for Him in the loss of something He gladly and joyfully created–the animal (Gen. 3:9, 21). In doing this, God provided for them a covering–protection and provision.

And remember the Israelites, when they were removed from their circumstances; God provided for them, too, with manna from Heaven (Exo. 16). And, finally, God provided His Son as the ultimate way for us to be reunited with Him in the Garden, to once again be invited in rather than cast out.

God comes for you, even in the circumstances you face right now. Your anxiety will judge the situation by facts and information, and, of course, the temptation of fear. There is legitimate fear in the world, all around us, but against all odds, God has always and continues to provide rescue for His people. When your anxiety speaks, “Am I loved? Am I loveable?”, speak to your anxiety.

Remind your anxiety that you are loved, that even though the circumstances around you may look dire, your God has come and is coming for you. You are deeply and powerfully, abundantly and always, loved. This week, we’ll take a look at our experience of anxiety in our body and minds, where it finds its roots, and how we can believe, at a deeper level, this love for us. This shift in perspective of our anxiety is enough for today.

“Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous–(and I am yearning) to know it.”

Psalm 139:14, NLT (personalization added)

Parenting Tip: How do you notice your child fearing a loss of love? Or a fear of being removed from you, or their caregivers? How do you witness anxiety in their mood, their words, or their body? Spend some time simply noticing these things in your child, to give you a greater awareness of when they may be feeling a loss of connection, a fear of their own “exile”.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as I walk through my day, show me the ways you love me and provide for me and protect me in my wilderness. Reveal to me the ways you are coming for me, have come for me, in a deeply convincing way that removes all doubt, fear, and worry, and, with it, my anxiety. Come for me, God. Amen.

*Wild at Heart Podcast, Secure Attachment to God Pt. 1-3