Do you ever feel like you’re on an emotional roller coaster?
Like the circumstances of your life make it almost impossible to live in a state of consistent peace? A few months ago, I experienced something I’d never experienced before…a deep level of anxiety.
I noticed it for the first time at the beginning of my son’s junior year high school baseball season.
I could feel my heart start to race as he stepped up to bat each time. And when I say my heart raced, I’m not kidding. Almost every game my Apple watch would start to send me notifications that my heart rate was too high, easily and regularly reaching 125, 130, 145. And I would pray. Now, there’s nothing wrong with praying as your child gets ready to perform. I do it all the time, but these prayers in this season were different. There was a level of desperation attached to them that was disproportionate to the circumstances we were in. I was praying for victory like he was dying in a hospital bed, not GETTING to play the game he loved so much.
This went on all spring and into the summer, and it didn’t make sense. He ended his high school season with a .348 batting average and ended the summer, after playing in 35 travel games, with a .500 BA. I mean, for a kid who was having trouble getting the ball out of the infield the previous season, he was doing great…and yet I was NOT doing great. I don’t think you would’ve been able to see it on the outside. In fact, my husband had no idea I was struggling until I told him. It was totally all happening on the inside.
Finally, one hot summer day, I realized I needed help. I confessed my struggle to my husband and to a group of praying friends I knew would cover me. I listened to their collective wisdom, started asking them to pray when I felt the anxiety creeping in, and started putting into practice everything I knew about the kind of peace only Jesus can give. Slowly, the Lord began to give me victory over my anxiety and lack of peace. But more than that, He showed me where it was coming from, and helped me get to the root of it.
Today, if you’re finding yourself with that kind of anxiety, or even if you just need some peace in the everyday, normal storms of life, I invite you to join me in carving out some quiet.
Jesus warned in John 16:33 that His followers could expect to have trouble in this life, but the good news is that He left us His peace. Not peace like the world gives, but peace that surpasses our ability to understand where it came from.This is the kind of peace I want to help you step toward inside of my brand new, 5-day study of peace, Carving Out Quiet.
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