"You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.” — Isaiah 26:3

I’ve waited years to share how I wound up sprinting and screaming through the parking lot of my husband’s workplace. I like to consider myself a generally respectable, mostly normal adult woman, and so I needed to let some time pass before that particular breakdown could be shared with anyone but my husband. The workplace in question was a downtown skyscraper made of all windows. Surely, someone from some floor saw a clearly deranged young woman shout-flailing through multiple rows of parked cars. But, I know for sure that one person witnessed it. My screams were so intense that the lobby security guard came running out to rescue me. 

If only I could say I needed rescuing. No. His sudden presence awakened me to the fact that I was not actually in any danger, or running from anything at all, other than the screaming toddler in the back seat of my car.

It had been a rough day. Things escalated. Eventually, I found myself wail-running toward an unnecessarily concerned stranger.

It’s Time to Share the Parking Lot Story

About six years ago, I published a book called Afraid of All the Things, detailing my lifelong battle with fear. The end sheets of that book are my own handwriting, listing everything I could think of that I’d spent life being anxious over since childhood.

“...food allergies (adult onset), people asking me to serve in children’s ministry, drive-by shootings, chronic hiccups, exploding internal organs…”

The list goes on. Then, a couple years later I wrote a Bible study called Anxious about how to fight anxiety with God’s Word.

So, when the lovely ladies here at Dwell Differently asked me to write about anxiety and include a personal story, I said to my husband, “...I’m stumped. What have I not already shared with the world about my struggle, other than that time I acted like a crazy person in the parking lot outside your office…”

We agreed that enough time had passed for me to give you the gift of realizing that there are people out there (me) who are crazier than you. Happy to serve.

How Did I Get There?

At the time of the incident, I was a 26-year-old stay-at-home mom to my firstborn toddler, whose lung power is Broadway level (she just starred in Annie at her theater school), and whose emotions are off-the-charts massive. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the screaming toddler stage, but it can get hopelessly loud. It feels like failure. There’s no worse place to be than trapped with a screaming child in a car on the freeway of a new city.

The only way I can explain the outcome is to say that I had been white-knuckling my steering wheel for what felt like forever, and by the time we arrived at our destination, my body needed to escape the chaos. I wanted to hold it together and be calm in front of my daughter. So, I held in the panic until I exited the car and removed myself from the situation. Then, the wild sprinting, the crazed shrieking, and the lobby guard looking to save my life.

Needless to say, I found a Christian counselor and a medical prescription the following week. Soon after, I opened up and shared my anxiety struggle, probably for the first time, with some friends in my small group at church. The big, embarrassing, scary thing I’d long battled felt lighter and less looming when I received the comfort of Jesus through the understanding of his followers. That was the beginning of learning what to do with my anxiety.

Fighting Anxiety on My Own

I spent years trying to fight my panic with my own willpower. I grew up fearing so many things and one way of coping was to avoid the things I was afraid of. But I couldn’t win the avoidance game forever.

I was embarrassed at the thought of asking for help or taking medicine or admitting that I was weak. I really wanted to be a super mom and super Christian, and I didn’t even realize how un-gospeled my life had become. I’d been walking with Jesus for more than a decade at that point, but up until then, I viewed the sacrifice and power of Jesus as a thing that saved me from hell, but I didn’t see it as powerful enough to give me peace or abundant life right now. 

My deepest anxiety stemmed from the fact that I feared I was doing my faith all wrong. Shouldn’t a follower of Jesus be marked by joy and peace? Am I just more messed up than everyone else? Will this ever get better? And sometimes that anxiety came out loudly in the parking lot of respectable businesses.

The Reality of Right-Now Peace

600-ish years before Jesus came and brought salvation to the world, the prophet Isaiah wrote about him and his coming. It’s one of my favorite books of the Bible. I love to imagine early Christians connecting the dots…realizing that their Messiah came the way Isaiah predicted he’d come, died the way Isaiah wrote he’d die, and fulfilled the law, giving weak, flawed, broken people like all of us a restored and healed relationship with our Father.

Isaiah said of God, “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you” (Isaiah 26:3).

God said that. And God is a perfect promise keeper. So, why is it so hard to hold onto that  peace?

I think it’s because we’re humans. We so easily forget the truth, forget our purpose, and do what I did for so many years. Maybe we keep trusting God for our salvation, but often we feel like we’d better do a really good job pleasing him and ourselves and the others in our lives if we want to be peaceful. We live like God’s work saves, but our work provides the peace we want so badly.

The good news is—that isn’t the gospel. Living that way is anti-gospel. Sometimes we live like Jesus was powerful enough to rescue us, but isn’t powerful enough to help us rest. But if Jesus is stronger than death itself, isn’t he stronger than the cries of a baby in the back seat? Jesus took the keys of hell. He can handle anything we could possibly panic about.

But we have to be able to remember that it is his power, not ours. For years, even my spiritual disciplines were an effort to prove something to God. Rather than consuming Scripture as God’s living and active Word—the gift that it is—I’d read it like I was going to be timed and tested. Have I read enough this week? Do I know enough about the Old Testament? Is God pleased with my word count today?

I was looking to Scripture, to church, and to my acts of worship as the means to God’s love, rather rejoicing that Jesus brings all the means. Worship doesn’t earn us a place at the table; worship is the response to the reality that Jesus already brought everything to the table. We brought nothing but (to quote Isaiah again) the “filthy rags” that made it necessary for us to be rescued (Isaiah 64:6).

I still struggle. I still fear the wrong things sometimes. But, I’ve learned that I don’t have to be a slave to my struggles if I fill my heart and life with the truth of God’s Word and keep my focus on the One who's done it all. 

We can “set [our] mind[s] on things above,” not on earthly things, every day (Colossians 3:2). With the help of our Bibles, our friends, and our temporary Bible tattoos, :) we can set our attention on the finished work of Jesus that leads to the perfect peace of Jesus. Our purpose is not to be super composed, never-screaming, always-serene humans. No. Our purpose is to trust the Spirit to transform us (2 Corinthians 3:18), trusting that his grace is sufficient for us and that his power made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). We are definitely weak. Sometimes we are screaming-through-the-parking-lot-of-public-places weak. But he is strong. He is enough.