The Root of Anxiety
About two-and-a-half years ago, my wife Terry and I decided to start a couple of raised bed vegetable gardens. A piece of cake, right? Wrong. I was told we would have to dig at least one-and-a-half feet below the surface first. Besides the soil being kind of hard, there were roots. All kinds of roots. Thank God it was the spring season! We live in southeast Texas. Enough said! I had no idea there were so many roots until I started digging. The deeper I dug, the bigger the roots.
I couldn’t just pull those big ones up, they had to be cut.
“We’ll take her from here…”
I felt like I had a pretty good handle on this anxiety thing until July 14, 2020. My wife, Becky, had been infected with Covid-19 about a week earlier. The lockdowns had begun. The fear and anxiety in the atmosphere was tangible. Becky’s immune system had been compromised due to eighteen years of immunosuppressive drugs after a successful liver transplant. More about that some other time. After being sick for a week her breathing became very difficult. I drove her to the hospital where I was met by security telling me I could go no further. “We’ll take her from here,” they said. As I kissed her goodbye, I watched a nurse roll her away in a wheelchair. She had been admitted to the hospital many times before. Every single time I was there with her, holding her hand, praying for her, advocating on her behalf. This time, everything was out of control.
A feeling came over me that is hard to describe. It was a mixture of worry, fear, anger, and helplessness.
It was anxiety on steroids.
I come from a long line of worriers.
“Well, you know, Kevin, anxiety runs in our family.” That response came from a relative after I had made a remark about worrying too much. My response to her was, “Yes, I know it runs in our family, but let’s stop it from running! If Jesus said, ‘Don’t worry (Matt. 6:25)’ and ‘Be anxious for nothing,’ then there must be a way to stop it.”
There can be generational sins that are prevalent in a family — fear, anxiety, addiction, rejection, suicide, sexual trauma, and the list goes on. We can’t change what our parents and grandparents did or neglected to do, but thank God we can learn how to overcome these things through his grace! Thank God that Jesus Christ defeated the powers of darkness through His cross, blood, and resurrection!
The Secret Place
There is a place we can move into where anxiety can’t reach us.
“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.”” (Psalms 91:1-2)
Where do you go for refuge?
Maybe you’re asking, “Is there a shelter I can run into when things become chaotic and the walls are closing in on me?”
“The name of the Lord is a strong tower; The righteous runs into it and is safe.” (Proverbs 18:10)
Next time, we’ll look at what it means to run into that strong tower.
Kevin