In the Eye of the Storm: Finding Peace Amidst Anxiety

Blog by Alan Fadling

In A Non-Anxious Life, I wrote how Jesus’s counsel about anxiety speaks to the reality of God’s physical care for his creation. Jesus says, “Look at the birds.” He urges us to recognize that God is caring for their physical needs. You never see them shopping at the local grocery store, yet they always find food to eat each day.

In the first weeks after the book release, I found myself doing a lot of podcast and radio interviews. During one of these, California was being hit by a historic rainstorm that dropped four months’ worth of rain in just two days. Our backyard looked like a lake. I was just finishing up my conversation when I looked out the window through a torrent of rain and noticed a number of birds happily eating lunch at our bird feeders.

As my smartphone was alerting me to a flood warning for our area, the birds were enjoying the care of God right in the middle of it.

Who was taking care of the birds? God.

Who is caring for me? God.

Right at the center of the storms that surround each of us, God’s care is present and real. The God of peace is a caring presence in the midst of my many cares, whatever they may be.

Flowers are another image Jesus uses when speaking about worry. You never see lilies shopping for clothes in a department store or roses posting carefully curated photos on social media, but they are more beautiful than any of that. No royalty or celebrity comes close to the beauty of a field covered with wildflowers.

I remember visiting Israel one spring about ten years ago. Throughout the trip, we saw fields full of bright red anemones everywhere we drove. They were breathtakingly beautiful. They don’t anxiously strive to be beautiful. God has given them beauty. In the same way, the goodness and beauty of our own lives is a gift rather than something we frantically try to earn.

God cares for the physical well-being of birds and flowers, and we can rest in God’s tangible care for us as well. My worries matter to God. Jesus cares about our concerns, but they don’t worry him. That which provokes anxiety in me is in the Father’s care.

Recently, there have been a number of situations—personal, relational, and vocational—that have provoked a strong physical reaction of anxiety in me. It’s not an unfamiliar sensation. But practicing the presence of God’s care and peace as I was writing this latest book has enabled me to have a bit of distance from the anxiety rather than being inundated by it.

Martin Laird, in his beautiful little book Into the Silent Land, talks about the practice of silent prayer. He shares a metaphor that I’ve found very helpful. He suggests that all the anxious thoughts and feelings that surround us are like weather that surrounds a mountain. We are tempted, especially when that weather is stormy, to think that we are the weather.

But Laird reminds us that, in God, we are much more solid than that. We are like that mountain, rooted in God, rather than the surface weather that comes and goes. We have worries, but we are not our worries. This difference of perspective has helped me to right-size anxious thoughts and feelings. Anxiety can still come on strong in my experience, but recognizing that it’s passing weather and not permanent reality has been good for me.

My thoughts, feelings, and sensations of anxiety are real. They are actually happening to me and in me. But God-with-me is even more real.

Too often I’ve practiced the presence of anxiety more than the presence of God. It’s as though I’m rehearsing my worries in front of God rather than welcoming the reality of God into my worries.

Sometimes the best thing I can do when feeling overwhelmed by anxieties is to sit, become still in my body, and offer myself to the solid, caring presence of God. I can let God be the place of solid care that supports me in the midst of my many concerns. I can learn to let the peace of Christ displace worry and to embody peace instead of continuing to rehearse my anxiety.

Let me conclude with a blessing I crafted to close one of the chapters in my new book:

May God’s empowering presence, his measureless generosity, and his great goodness be with you, seeking you before ever you seek him. And may grace bear the fruit of deep well-being, freedom from anxious care, and a soul at rest in the presence of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen! 

For Reflection:

• As you reflect on Jesus’s words in the Gospels about birds and flowers, how does recognizing God's care for them challenge your own perspective on anxiety and worry?
• Recall the metaphor of being like a mountain amidst passing weather. How might this metaphor help you navigate moments of anxiety in your own life?