Do you ever experience feelings of fear and anxiety? If so, you are not alone. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), over 40 million adults (19.1%) in the U.S. have an anxiety disorder.1 Although most people will occasionally experience mild symptoms of fear and anxiety, others may find their symptoms to be debilitating. While our symptoms may vary from mild to severe, for those of us who are believers in Jesus, we can find comfort in His presence.

I thought holding everything together was the key to happiness, until I realized God had something better in mind. Control. Planning. Perfecting. If you’re anything like me, you’ve clung tightly to life like a checklist, believing that if you just manage everything well enough, you’ll finally feel whole and fix what is broken. The truth is, even when things look “perfect” on the outside, you can still feel hollow, restless, and unsatisfied on the inside.

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.

How can we have faith in difficult times? With patient endurance as we trust God to see us through our trials in life.