Jesus Meets Anxiety
Five or ten years ago, anxiety was not a word I came across very often. I was always very carefree and easy going. If I heard about someone dealing with anxiety it felt very far off and extremely unrelatable. As with many of the hardest things in life, empathy is almost impossible without having an experience that brings you face to face with it.
Before my Dad was diagnosed with Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer, my feelings about cancer were very mild and distant. I remember hearing a classmate in 5th grade share that their grandpa had been diagnosed with some form of cancer. I’ve thought back to that moment several times since my Dad died. I’ve realized how little capacity I had to understand what my friend was going through.
Anxiety and I have taken a similar journey. Where a few users ago I would have used words like “worry” or “stress”, I now find myself using descriptors like “terror” or “emotional paralysis”. Some of this has been a part of my own experience. A lot of this has been me walking with my wife through her battles with anxiety. A huge trigger for the both of us last year was a 5 night NICU stay with my now six month old daughter. It left both of us reeling as we wrestled with a new level of fear and anxiety that came with having our daughter rushed away in an ambulance a few minutes after birth.
Triggers come in all shapes and sizes though. They can be as small as tension at work with a coworker. They can come through conflict with family or friends. They can be also be large scale like back in 2016 when the news was a constant stream of information about the latest ISIS attack. A pretty relevant one right now is what I’ll refer to as “The Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020” — I know you’re tired of hearing the other word ;)
Last week, we had a horrific tornado rip through Nashville coming within a mile of our house and causing devastating damage all around us. As I was venting to Jesus about my fears I saw a post on Instagram:
“Be careful that you never allow your hearts to grow cold. Remain passionate and free from anxiety and the worries of this life. Then you will not be caught off guard by what happens. Don’t let me come and find you drunk or careless in living like everyone else.” — Luke 21:34
Goodness, that feels like such a tall order. I told Jesus how unreasonable His demand was. Instead of defending his position, I felt Him confront some of the places where I’ve been cold and lacked empathy for others. The places where I’ve thought that anxiety was something that required a fresh dose of sucking it up and maybe a few counseling sessions.
I’d like to say that I humbly accepted his correction, but I found myself lashing out. I told him how it was easy for him to tell us to “remain free from anxiety” when all he did was walk around pretending to be human. Sure he had human skin and a human voice, but he didn’t know what it felt like to be anxious. He didn’t know what fear felt like. He always knew some greater truth that immediately moved him out of those “sinful” emotions.
As I threw all of my best arguments and accusations at him of being cold and fake and distant, I saw a striking picture.
I saw His sad eyes. I saw the cross. I saw the things that led up to the cross. I saw the blood that He sweat in the garden. I saw the weight that He carried.
In that moment, I knew that Jesus had met with anxiety. It was not a fleeting moment, but potentially a lifelong battle of surrender as He knew where His life was headed.
As I did some quick research on the process that leads up to a person sweating blood I found this:
“Hematidrosis is a condition in which capillary blood vessels that feed the sweat glands rupture, causing them to exude blood, occurring under conditions of extreme physical or emotional stress.”
Moments before his death, Jesus (the man who was God) experienced a weight of anxiety that was so intense it caused his sweat glands to rupture. This was a man that did not rely on being God as a means to bypass human suffering. He sacrificed His place in Heaven to come and experience this world as a human. He rescued us as a human with all of the emotions and experiences that are so unique to our humanity.
As I’ve wrestled with this over the last several weeks the prayer that I keep coming back to is one for peace.
In The Passion Translation, I found a footnote that described what the Hebrew word for “peace” meant. This is my summary:
Peace is not just the absence of conflict. Peace is wholeness, wellness, well-being, safety, happiness, friendliness, favor, completeness, security, prosperity, victory, contentedness, tranquility, quietness, and restfulness. Peace destroy the authority that binds to chaos.
Peace is not the antonym of conflict and adversity. Peace is the resolution of fear, terror, and anxiety. It is the calm in the middle of the storm, not the absence of the storm. It is the Man who can sleep on a fishing boat in the middle of a thrashing sea.
Our Prince of Peace is not the Prince that keeps us from conflict. He is the Prince that destroys the authority that binds to chaos. He is the Prince of wholeness and well-being, of safety and security, of tranquility and restfulness.
My prayer over you as chaos and fear tries to steal your attention, is that your focus would come off of the storm and onto your sleeping King.
Bill Johnson says it best:
You only have authority over the storm you can sleep in. If I am filled anxiety in any given situation, it becomes hard for me to release peace — because I can only give what I have. Authority functions from heaven’s peace.
May you experience the fullness of His peace as conflict, adversity, and chaos swirl around you.
