Dear Daughters,

I’ve been kinda crabby lately.  Somedays I just wake up angry.  Dad is annoying me – not intentionally – I’ve just become easily annoyed.  Uncertainty, knowing this world is not what it used to be, the palpable fear and panic in people’s eyes and voices is taking a toll on us all.

Rebekah Lyons summarized my emotions well:

I woke up hoppin’ mad a couple days ago for reasons I couldn’t explain.  Maybe because the adrenaline of a new challenge has worn off, Ground Hog Day has kicked in, the month of positivity and reset is over, and isolation feels indefinite.

We’re all in this pandemic together, but the thoughts we entertain can cause either anxiety and fear or bring us peace.  If I try to look too far into the future and consider what might happen to all of you, your children and our world, I become anxious because the future holds much ambiguity.  But if we’re honest, the future has always been uncertain.  We’ve never had a playbook for the future.  We may have had the illusion of control, but in all reality it was just that, an illusion.

Now, however, the deception is gone forever.  One little virus seems to be virtually ruling the entire world – except for the cool continent of Antarctica. 

How then shall we think?  The thoughts we think become our emotions which in turn drives everything we say and do.

On what anchors for our soul can we truly rely?  Mark Batterson points out in Acts 27, when Paul and many others had been on a ship for 14 days in a severe storm on the Adriatic Sea, there was fear that they would be dashed against the rocks, so …they dropped four anchors from the stern and prayed for daylight.

The only true words I know, which can be anchors for our soul, those which have been true for millennium, are out of the #1 Bestseller of all time – The Bible.  Here’s a few anchors I have been dropping in my mind lately in order to keep free from anxiety:

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger,

abounding in love.  Psalm 103:8

Psalm 103 is one of my favorite Psalms, it speaks throughout about how He has brought me out of the pit, crowned me with love and compassion, satisfies me with good things, and forgives all my sins.  Although King David who wrote this song lived 1,000 years before Jesus, his words still ring true today.

My second anchor is:

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are Your ways my ways, declares the Lord.  As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.  Isaiah 55:8-9

Since God is the Creator of everything seen and unseen as well as the Creator of me, it is an undeniable fact that His thoughts are higher than mine.  An astrophysicist has estimated our universe to be about 93 billion light years.  Since a single light-year is the distance light travels in one year (around 6 trillion miles) and He has created everything within our universe, I know He’s a lot wiser than I. It’s a bit like comparing my thoughts to an ant’s thoughts – though a trillion times more. He understands many things I cannot even imagine.  I don’t always like or even understand His thoughts, but I believe they are true and good.

The third anchor for my soul is Romans 8:28:

For we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. 

Notice He doesn’t say all things are good.  It’s a well-known fact that bad things happen to good people, life is unfair…  Yet, God is the God of great reversals, He brings light out of darkness, life out of death. Just remember the stories of Joseph, Job, Ruth, Esther, King David and Jesus.  They all went through dark, scary, uncertain times, yet God eventually brought good out of everything. 

Of course there were years of grief, heartache and despair, yet the ending in every single story was good.  Reading the Old Testament stories are a wonderful antidote for anxiety. And since Jesus says he is the same yesterday, today and forever, I believe He will bring good out of this tragedy as well.

And my fourth anchor is 2 Timothy 1:7

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, and of power, and of a sound mind.

Just repeating this verse gives me comfort.  It reminds me that fear doesn’t come from God – only love, power and a sound mind come from Him. 

All fear is but the notion that God’s love ends,

says Ann Voskamp.

So even though it sounds simple to keep these four anchors in my mind, it is not easy. The dire predictions for the future will come, yet I will – with the help of the Holy Spirit – believe that this world is not my home, I’m just-a-passin’ through. Then my soul is at peace, and amazingly, joy and love slip in the back door.  I will not get annoyed so easily at circumstances out of my control.

In the first book of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Frodo – the bearer of the Ring – laments that a great evil has disrupted his life. 

I wish it need not have happened in my time, he says.

Gandalf responds with both compassion and wisdom:

So do I, and so do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

I think I will decide to hang on to the anchors that will steady me in the time of this storm and wait for the daylight. 

Love, Mom