Life has been harder. This summer was a flat line of rest, inactivity, lazing that was interspersed with spikes of high activity. Friends' weddings, long weekend trips to various places. I got a lot of sun. Didn't read even a fraction of the number of books I planned. My soul rested, but didn't feel completely at rest. What was it? Where was the disconnect?
My new job started and the anxiety that had been dormant was made alive in a ferocious, almost crippling vice grip. I didn't know anything. I couldn't work fast enough. I didn't have any answers. I wasn't enough. My thoughts and self felt pulled to all four corners of the Earth. I wasn't in a great place.
But that's how I'm made. The older I get, the more I see it and feel it. I'm sensitive. I feel change acutely. I feel my lack acutely. I feel disapproving (or what feels like it) eyes acutely.
I've lived with fear and anxiety my whole life. There's something ingrained in my DNA that generates it. My whole self has been formed around it. And that scares me.
What can break through the seemingly bottomless cavern of dark fear that permeates into my soul?
I grasp and cling to the Cross. There can be no darkness where there is light. Jesus gets close to us, looks us in the face, and loves us. Where there is love, there is no fear.
I reread a passage of The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare. Jesus, during his ministry, walked around and healed people of their diseases. He does that now. Today. He sits with us and brings his peace that cuts through the hate, the fear, the lies. He envelopes us with himself. Someone who sees us and loves us. I'll say that again - He sees us and he loves us. In the history of all the people in all the world, we will never find another love like that.
We need only say to him - "Will you please come into this place? This heart that has yearned for peace. For rest. For love. I'm tired and weary and I just can't do this anymore. Jesus, I need you now more than ever."
