Peace Despite Pain

There were several years, back some maybe 7 years from now, when I had a terrible problem with anxiety and worry. This was not really a "free-floating anxiety" but was a nightly event of focused panic over the impending unknown. I would go to bed; and then it would hit--a barrage of fear over finances, housing, job, America's future...anything that there was to be worried about, I was worried about it.

I see this fear now at work in my husband. He lies awake at night stressing over things about which he has no control.... trying to think of solutions and panicking when he cannot. A large part of the reason that he is so afraid, is due to my illness. Medical expenses are and have been, enormous. Much of the burden of taking care of things has fallen on his shoulders, because I can no longer do them. (I know that, when I write, I seem fairly normal and coherent, but in person, my illness is much more evident.) And he worries about what will happen to me and my daughter should he no longer be around.

It is a miserable feeling, that fear. For a long time during my years of struggling with this problem, I read everything I could find about anxiety and worry, especially from a Christian perspective and from Scripture. But nothing seemed to really help.

Do you know what finally solved my problem? It was several things. For one thing, I thought back over my life and wrote down every problem that I had faced where things could have gone terribly wrong, or when I had some great need. Years of financial need; illness, problems with housing etc....all were met, by one means or another...but all by my Father in Heaven. Some of those needs were enormous--but they were no problem to my Adonai.

Gradually, I started to relax into His hands; recognizing that the great Love which had cared for me before, would care for me in the future...regardless of what that future would bring. And He has done exactly that. Yes, I have big issues: pain, illness and psychiatric problems--but it has never been anything that leveled me for long. Every need has, one way or another, (sometimes miraculously) been met. And God is the same, Yesterday, Today and Forever. That's a promise. He takes care of His kids...and He will continue to do so!

So, the result?? PEACE. Jesus said He came in order to give us an incomprehensible peace...and it's true: He does. People have said to me: HOW CAN YOU BE SO CALM AT A TIME LIKE THIS?? And I laugh to myself, because before I'd entered the darkness, I did not have the treasure of Peace. And God has given it to me because He has given me Himself. And with a Dad like that; a girl just can't worry.