Struck Down but Not Destroyed: Living Faithfully with Anxiety

by Pierce Taylor Hibbs

What God has made in Adam is good, even “very good.” But it’s not finished yet. Eve completes the creation of humanity. Without her, Adam would have been good, but humanity itself—the very meaning of what it is to be human—would be unfinished. Eve completes not just Adam, but the creation of humanity as a whole. Adam is unfinished without Eve.

There’s no defining a husband or a wife in solitude. These are persons defined in relation to each other. They are joined. That’s why preachers echo the words of Jesus in modern-day wedding ceremonies: “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Mark 10:9).

Western American culture and the Bible are worlds apart. If you’re used to defining yourself in isolation, frankly, that’s simply foreign to the Great Story. We have our distinctness, our uniqueness as creatures of God, certainly. But that uniqueness never eclipses or overrides our joint identity as one flesh. There’s distinctness in unity.

We yearn for someone to sympathize with us in our anxiety, and Christ does this. But that sympathy begins by a recognition of where we are, not a directive for where we should be or where we could be if only we did X. My wife begins many conversations about my anxiety simply by saying, “Hey, I see you.” You wouldn’t believe the comfort that brings me. It’s the comfort of being located, of being found.

Don’t think of prayer as momentary speech. Think of it as continuous dialogue, because even if you’re not speaking to God, he’s speaking to you. Why do we restrict ourselves to praying only with our eyes closed and our hands folded?

True love for your spouse involves actions that bless that person regardless of your benefit. Even more than that, it involves actions that bless that person when you may even take a hit for it. Christ, remember, didn’t love us because we were lovely; he loved us when we were hideous and hateful; he loved us to make us lovely. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

Intensely focusing your attention and energy on someone else is one way you can combat your anxiety and bless others at the same time. This is another reminder that our anxiety is a tool in the hands of God, if we’re willing to be shaped by him through it, and to respond to others with our new shape.

John Calvin used this phrase to refer to sin in general: curvetus in se. It means “curved in on oneself.”

Creating disunion, even with the noble aspiration of protecting your kids, is harmful to the core of who we are, and to who they are. The shield and deny approach leads to a host of spiritual and relational problems. It looks appealing for protective parents, but it ends up hurting both sides in the end.

Don’t be afraid to be weak in front of your children. In doing so, you’re giving them the perfect opportunity to see God’s strength at work in you.

While we moderate and contextualize our communication with our kids, we still communicate with them. We still need to express the negative side of humanity: the sadness, the anger, the frustration—and yes, the anxiety!

Our children need to see that we’re children too—always reliant on the most generous, patient, self-giving parent there ever was.

Anxiety is a horrific form of suffering. I don’t like it any more than anyone else. But we have to keep bringing ourselves and our children back to the context and the God-ordained purpose for it: relationship. Nothing we can experience in this life goes beyond that word.

Strength lives in God. And how do we get that strength? (No one likes this answer, but it’s the only true one.) Through weakness! Our kids need to see that, especially because of how paradoxical it is. Daddy is not the strong one; God is. Mommy is not the strong one; God is. And that’s okay. In fact, that’s a good thing, because even if we feel strong right now, weakness is coming.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Weakness is the way. Weakness is the way. Say it over and over until it becomes a mantra for your daily life. And let your kids hear you. Everyone else around them is going to sing the opposite message. They need to hear the truth from you. You are not the strong one.

Tim Witmer discusses what he calls the principle of presence with our children.[67] It’s a simple principle, but we still find it so difficult to implement. We need to be with them if we’re going to shepherd them. That requires intentionality and concrete planning, on a daily and weekly basis. This can be very hard for some of us to implement.

We must reiterate that the goal toward which we lead our children is that they come to know the Lord and follow him.

We need to turn into sheep before our children, show them the Shepherd, and lead them to him. In those moments, we are the best shepherds to our own little sheep.

My friends, our dignity blossoms when we find solace in our savior, and in him alone. We’re most dignified before the children of men when we’re most dependent on the Son of man.

Don’t be deceived by the world: it’s not more noble to walk through your anxiety with dignity and a sense of self-sufficiency. In fact, those very things are what keep the kingdom door closed to you. Fall apart like a child before your heavenly Father.

After the long and harrowing battle with anxiety in this life, after every arrow has been fired and every sword put back in its sheath, there are two things that await us for eternity: communion and peace.

“That man bears God’s image means much more than that he is spirit and possesses understanding, will, etc. It means above all that he is disposed for communion with God, that all the capacities of his soul can act in a way that corresponds to their destiny only if they rest in God.”[70] We’re bent on communion. It’s what we were made for. It’s what we were crafted to crave.

Real, lasting peace is not the absence of anxiety; it’s our closeness to the Lord. Peace, in other words, is God’s presence.

The whole story of Scripture is about the God who aims to be with his people. That’s where the story starts, and that’s where it ends. And because we’re creatures who reflect God, we’re also made to be with others.

We need repeated instruction. We need constant reminders. We need to jump off the same truths multiple times before our spirit trusts the foundation. That’s just a reality of being a slow learner—and all of us are slow learners in some way.

Life is not about avoiding and eliminating our anxiety. It’s about conforming to Christ through it.

Because of who God is and what he has done for us in Christ, being struck down is a blessing, not a curse. It puts us in the perfect place to be made strong in our weakness.

God is shaping you to Christ through your anxiety. Let him work. Let him impress that image on you. Let him then use you to show others that the God who suffers with us is the God who is always for us.