“Christians don’t have anxiety,” is what was being taught around me at the church I was attending at the time. Therefore, I didn’t feel like a real Christian. It produced shame which led to minimum prayers and reading my Bible less frequently. All I kept thinking was, “I can’t be a Christian and have anxiety.”

Some people find their calling through success. I found mine in chaos. I am a wife of 35 years, a mother to four adult children, and a grandmother to two beautiful little girls. But the titles don’t tell the whole story. They don’t speak to the sleepless nights, the crises, the moments I sat in a dark room wondering what in the world God was up to, or if He had even forgotten me. The chaos didn’t come all at once.

Have you ever prayed to the Lord for peace and still felt your heart racing? Fear rushes in before you can even catch your thoughts. And maybe the hardest part is that the situation has not changed. The issue is not resolved. The thing that started the fear is still sitting right in front of you. Sometimes peace feels far away, not because we do not love Jesus, know Scripture, or pray enough, but because fear can feel very loud in a very real situation.

God's Goodness in Our Lives- The book of Exodus paints a vivid picture: a rescued people, quick to worship in moments of triumph.

I never got the father I longed for. And it made my heart sick for a very long time. I didn’t know I needed to process it. I didn’t even realize it was grief. After all, how can you grieve something you never had? But I’ve since learned - that’s not only possible, it’s necessary. For a long time, I pushed that grief down.

Did you know there are trees that God intentionally planted for us in the desert? The scripture tells us God planted them in the desert wasteland. The purpose of this planting is to demonstrate God's power and creation for people to “see and understand” that He who did it.