(Takes deep breath)
I can't do this...my seam is about to bust...hanging on by threads. My anxiety is getting the best of me...and I can't shake it.
My children are grown..upper 20s. My daughter is experiencing extremely high blood pressure and just started meds. I'm talking 180/120...and she's probably had it for quite a long time. She has migraines and it's probably from her pressure. She has 2 young boys, 6 and 4.
My son is having recurring stomach pain..probably something chronic. He is in college online..inbetween jobs..so no insurance. He is getting headaches too.
I lost my dad at 11, brother at 17, and my sister at 24, her children were young too...2 and 4.
Losing people in life will affect you...esp losing a parent at 11. I get so worried when my children have problems..im so scared im going to lose them...because thats how it's been in my life.
I have prayed, and prayed, cried...and im trying to give this to God...because I know he loved my children more than I do. I have asked him to please help my daughter..I saw my sister die and her children were so young..I don't want my grandboys losing their mom. She had pre-eclampsia with her first baby, and hbp with her second.
I tell God, I'm sorry for sounding selfish, death is a part of life...but any life threatening or serious problems with my children (esp) I panic.
If you can share some encouraging words...I know, I need to let it go.
Isaiah 26:3-4
3 You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on you: because he trusts in you.
4 Trust in the LORD for ever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength:
I memorized these verses long ago in a time when I was deeply and chronically anxious. But, you know, at the time they were not helpful at all. I tried to trust God. My fears, though, were strong, they kept coming, rushing up to seize my mind and cripple my life. I would say again and again to God, "I trust you! Give me your peace!" but His perfect peace never came.
It was years later before I understood why I couldn't obtain that "perfect peace" from God that Isaiah had written about. You see, God is the perfect peace He offers to me; I find perfect peace
in Him. When I was pleading with Him to give me peace, to give me relief from my tormenting fears, I didn't realize I was asking for more
of Him in my life. I wanted to feel calm, I wanted to be free of anxiety, but back then I didn't want more of God in my life. I wanted His
help, but I didn't want
Him filling and ordering every corner of my life.
I know now that God gives me peace that is perfect by filling me with the one thing in the universe that is truly perfect: Himself. Here's the catch: Do I
really trust God when my life is not fully yielded to Him throughout each day, to do with as He wishes? Will God fill me with Himself when I refuse to give up the throne of my heart and life to Him completely? If my "cup" is full of myself, where is there room for God?
The trusting in the Lord of which Isaiah wrote begins with
submission to the
Lord, it begins with yielding myself to Him, to His will and way, sometimes moment-by-moment, throughout every day.
Romans 6:13
13 Neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those who are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
Romans 6:19
19 ...for as you have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.
Romans 8:14
14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
Romans 12:1
1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
James 4:6-7
6 But he gives more grace. Wherefore he says, God resists the proud, but gives grace unto the humble.
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God...
1 Peter 5:5-7
5 ...God resists the proud, and gives grace to the humble.
6 Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time:
7 Casting all your care upon him; for he cares for you.
I should have prayed those many years ago when I was caught in the terrible grip of fear, "Lord, God,
I submit myself to you to do with as you please. By faith, I trust you will work to transform me into the person you made me to be. Not my will but yours be done."
When I pray this way, yielding myself to God, He fills me with Himself and with the peace, love and joy that He is. To the degree that my life is not surrendered to God, to that same degree He is barred from filling me with His peace, that is, with Himself. God is not a bully or tyrant, forcing Himself into my life, busting down the doors of the rooms of sin and self-will that I want to keep closed to Him. No, He waits at those doors to enter until
I open them to Him. And until I do, He is not really Lord of my life and so cannot rule it, filling me with Himself and all the good and perfect things that He is.
I'm writing all this because I know what it is to be bound in anxiety and fear. I know, too, now, God's way to peace in the midst of the cruel troubles of life. I hope you'll yield yourself to Him and find that "peace which passes all understanding."
One last word: I was greatly habituated to not being submitted to God in many areas of my life. I had many sinful "reflexes" of thought and behaviour that challenged my yielding to God. And so, I would yield to God in one moment and in the next have to do so again as my thought-habits imposed themselves upon me. At times, I've had to yield again and again to God in rapid succession as the force of my well-trained selfishness sought to assert itself. But as I fix my eyes upon Him (
Hebrews 12:2-3; 2 Corinthians 3:18), and cease to fight myself, but, instead submit to God and wait upon Him to alter my desires and thinking (
Philippians 2:13), I find a growing liberty within myself from all sorts of things that once bound me horribly - including my fear.
Romans 8:15
15 For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!"
2 Timothy 1:7
7 For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
