Good reader, you may be in a season of suffering, too, and it may have understandably catapulted you into alarm. Or it could be that fear is your default state; you simply live in it. Some of us were raised afraid and learned to view the world through the lens of dread. (My girlfriend’s mother sends us terror alerts, worrisome weather reports, and news on local criminal activity anytime we are taking a trip together. We are forty-two-year-olds.)
The Bible is so incredibly helpful because, truly, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind (2 Timothy 1:7). Practically, that means making decisions out of fear, drawing conclusions from a place of fear, and getting stuck in the trappings of fear will lead us away from the truth, away from health, away from Jesus. It will, choice by choice, take us further from the sound mind and place of power God carved out for us. In short, it will mess us up. Simply identifying fear as the dominant emotion is a helpful red flag. It tells us: Whoa up, sister. These thoughts and ideas cannot be trusted.
Once I admitted to operating out of a destructive head space, I shook off a bit of paralysis and started putting into practice the spiritual disciplines I preach. First at bat: declaring faithfulness—not so much mine (as I kicked a piece of our fence down in fury) but God’s. I remembered: He is good. He has always been good. He loves us, and He is here. He is paying attention, and He heals. He can redeem what has been harmed. I do believe this. I was so terrified that I forgot for a minute, but I remembered. It was such a comfort that I cried from relief. God is faithful. He can be trusted.
Next up: community. Probably the darkest days of my life were the ones between discovery and disclosure. I am a member of a small friend tribe forged by one million moments of confession, transparency, truthfulness, and vulnerability. We’ve fought hard and won intimacy in life’s trenches together for years and years and years. Hand to God, there is not one thing unsaid among us. So I finally reached out and said:
I need you.
In the whole of my life, I will never forget sitting with our friends, crying together, praying together, their assurances of solidarity healing my heart on the spot. We pushed the fear back even more, their words of wisdom chipping through the ice of loneliness. Isolation concentrates every struggle. The longer we keep our heartaches tucked away in the dark, the more menacing they become. Pulling them into the light among trusted people who love you is, I swear, 50 percent of the recovery process.
Then: do the work. In our case, this looked like counseling, education, hard conversations (and lots of them), and speaking God’s Word over our family. Healing requires partnering with Jesus in the work He is accomplishing in us. We move. We engage. We do the things. Sometimes that involves therapy or medication, and by the way, there is no shame in either. It is not “lack of faith.” Rather, it is a sign of incredible strength. Whether you go for preventative maintenance or because you are hanging on by a thread, I’ve always believed that when Scripture describes “gifts of healing,” counselors are a part of that special group. They help us heal. They give us tools. They walk us through recovery. They remind us of our hope.
There is nothing weak about being in the care of a counselor. That is strong, sister. That says you are not passively waiting for your strength, your restoration. You are doing the work, poking the bear. You are actively laboring with God and making good use of someone else’s gifts to develop into a stronger, healthier person. Bravo, I say! May we use any tool possible as we pursue healthy marriages, healthy kids, and healthy souls. To abuse and suffering and loss and grief and pain and a horrible enemy, I say: Come at us, bro. We’re not going to take this stuff lying down.
The truth is, God created us with resiliency. Mankind is incredibly able to heal, to rise back up, to stare down pain with moxie. Jesus strengthens our minds for the task of recovery. We’ve got chops, girls. Pain is universal; there is no avoiding it, no system that will sidestep struggle. This terrible, mean voice screams out, “What did you do wrong? How did you go so terribly off the script?” when life bursts at the seams, but that’s a lie. Life can be hard because life can be hard. We’re not doing it wrong. What matters is excavating our pluck from the rubble and refusing to be defined by loss. Sometimes it looks like fury, sometimes determination, activated by a flash of our eyes and a straightening of our spines. Rather than cower under its weight, we force pain into a partnership, using it to grow, to learn, to catapult us into a deeper, wider, sturdier life.
In our family we read, we learned, went to counseling, studied, took constant temperature checks. And then we covered it all with spoken truth. A dear mentor sent me this exact text:
No matter what is stirred up, you stay tied down. Anchored down. I see debris flying—swirling like a tornado over your head—but I see you tied by a rope around your waist that is holding your feet to the ground. I see you up on your tip toes. Flatten those feet on the ground and stand firm. Trust Jesus. Trust Him with what you cannot reconcile.
So I did that. I flattened my feet, reclaimed my moxie, and told my people:
Your future is beautiful and purposed.
You are exactly as God planned you.
Jesus loves us and is with us.
We are not fragile. We are overcomers.
Our bodies may suffer, but our spirits LIVE.
And I am here to tell you today, as I write this, we live. Dear ones, it was just a bit ago I thought I would never smile again. And even worse, I thought I would be scared the rest of my life. Some things I’d counted on were gone, and they left a vacuum of insecurity.
But God has not given us a spirit of fear, nor has He saddled us with a spirit of defeat. We live because Jesus lives, because He is real and present and moving and working and He will not have us conquered. This is not hoodoo; it is a powerful reality. Flatten your feet, because nothing in your life is too dead for resurrection. It can be the very worst thing, the main thing, the one thing of which you said anything but that. Darkness can find your soul or marriage or child or body in ways that you begged against, that you blocked in every way. It can be worse than you think and more crushing than you imagined.
And even then, we live. This is the power of Christ in us. Rock bottom teaches us that God is who He says He is and He can do what He says He can do. We buy what we’ve been selling because it is real. God’s healing work means actual lives are restored, actual hearts are mended, actual strength is renewed. Real marriages can come back to life, flesh and blood families are repaired, and, miraculously, those very fractures fuse back stronger than before.
We live.
Hallelujah.
Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connections can supply.1
— JANE AUSTEN
CHAPTER 6