It was a season when everything needed to go smoothly, and it all seemed to fall apart. Our family moved to a new state so my husband could pastor a church plant. We had three children ages 3 and under. Our salary was cut in half. We couldn’t afford health care. Our rental house was prone to leaks and flooding, which made me concerned about the potential for mold.
As a pastor’s wife, I was navigating how to love my husband as he bore the weight and cares of the congregation. As he stood up to preach, I noticed my body would tense slightly. When he came home from an elders meeting looking heavy-laden and troubled, I felt the tension, and our young family felt the pressure.
A few months in, our family took a trip to visit extended family in Michigan. I was driving, and out of nowhere a deer jumped in front of our minivan, totaling it. Thankfully, we were OK—or so I thought.
A week after the accident, some caring friends that I regularly met up with asked me to replay the details, so I shared the story of that terrifying moment behind the wheel. As I drove home later that night, I felt as though I couldn’t breathe. My heart was pounding like the constant striking of a drumhead. I thought I must be having a heart attack.
When we got to the ER, I did not have the language to identify what was happening. They never told me what it was. I later learned that I had experienced my first panic attack.
By the time I figured out what was happening, I had several panic attacks under my belt. I would often wake from sleep, unconsciously reliving the accident in my dreams. During this season my faith never wavered in God. I continued to read the Scriptures. Yet the anxiety lingered on. The panic attacks were a band soon accompanied by an orchestra of heart palpitations, tightness in my chest, sweats, headaches, dizziness and insomnia. It was an unbearable ensemble playing out of tune with my harmonious Christian life.
Somewhere along the way I had been taught that Christian leaders should never be anxious, and if they were, all they needed to do was repent. Of course, there were things I needed to repent of, but there were other things where when I sought God to hunt out the sin behind my Generalized Anxiety Disorder I came back empty-handed. As my anxiety lingered, the shame surrounding my anxiety lingered too. I mean, we were in ministry, after all. Weren’t we the family who was supposed to have our lives, bodies and worries under control? Where was I to go for comfort?
What I found is that almost every significant figure in the Scriptures dealt with fear: Adam, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Elijah, Abraham, Job, Peter and many others. Their fear looked different depending on the moment—it looked like fear of speaking, fear of leading, fear of using gifts, fear that God would not keep his promise, fear of enemies, fear of suffering, fear of persecution and fear of death.
Looking at the Scriptures helped me to see that my life was not so different than those who had come before me. It also gave me great hope that fear would not be the end of my story since I was not the hero of it.
Three Fears and Three Gardens
In A Practical Treatise of Fear, written in 1682, John Flavel describes three types of fear: sinful, natural and religious.
Sinful fear started in Eden when Adam sinned and hid from God. God called out to Adam, saying, Where are you? and Adam’s response was, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” Sinful fear is hiding and turning away from God when we are afraid. Adam chose not to go toward the one who could fix his sin and concern. Faith doesn’t always take away anxiety, but it always moves us toward the God who is greater than our anxiety.
Natural fear is the fear that results from being human in a fallen world. Examples of this are when we experience natural disasters, the trauma of seeing a loved one die, stomach knots when it’s time to stand before others to preach, test anxiety, PTSD that lingers after war, receiving a diagnosis, postnatal anxiety or, like me, physical symptoms after a car accident.
These things are the result of this fallen world and fallen body, and not necessarily a sign of someone moving away from God into hiding due to sinful fear. Their body may be frightened as they are still resting in their God, who never is afraid.
We see the ultimate example of natural fear in the Scripture in our Savior Jesus, who despite having no sin felt the anguish and agony of the approaching crucifixion physically.
In the garden of Gethsemane, Luke notes that Jesus’ sweat was like drops of blood. Unlike Eden, in this garden, the second Adam’s mind was set on the will of God, and he moved toward his Father. Yet, in his humanity, his body felt the real effects of natural fear.
The good news is that Jesus suffered and his death opens the way for us to rightly fear God by living out what Flavel calls religious fear. As we trust in Jesus, he makes a way for us to enter that final and fruitful garden, the holy city of God. The penalty and presence of sinful and natural fear will be broken when we are in that final garden, enjoying the holy presence of our God in the New Heavens and New Earth.
The reality is, even if fear and anxiety are currently a part of our story, they will not always be. They are here now to expose our weakness and neediness for the One who is never anxious or afraid and who will eventually conquer anxiety in our lives.
A Greater Dependence
The truth is that you may seek God, and your anxiety may go away. Or you may seek him and find that it lingers on in this life. Our primary focus should not be on controlling our anxiety, but should be on the God who has sufficient resources and is entirely in control.
We don’t look to God merely so that we no longer feel anxious; we look to God because he is worthy of our devotion. We trust in God, whether he takes our anxiety away or not. Life often does not go as planned. It may all fall apart. We may experience disaster, difficulty, pain, grief, sickness, persecution, slander, imprisonment, accidents and even death. What are we going to do? We will remember who is with us.
When my mind was terrified at the thought of another panic attack coming upon me, I had to remind myself that even if I couldn’t breathe and my heart beat hard and fast, whatever my worst fear was, my God would be with me. He would not leave me alone. Even if I were to die because another deer jumped into the road and hit my car, he would be there.
In my most challenging moments with anxiety, I thought everything was falling apart. But through my anxiety I found a greater dependence upon God, which means he was putting everything right where it needed to be.
Blair Linne is an author, speaker, actress and Christian spoken word artist. She is the author of Made to Tremble: How Anxiety Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to My Faith (B&H).