The Silver Lining of Anxiety

My handi-work and signs of hope

About two weeks into this mess that has recently become my world, I realized I needed something to do with my hands.  I needed something to keep the monster of anxiety at bay, to keep my hands busy, and my mind distracted.  I grabbed a wire brush, a wide, thick paint brush, a bucket of pure white paint, and set to work on adding a fresh coat of paint to my parents' board fence. It was my own sort of therapy, the far cheaper kind but just as beneficial and maybe far more practical.  You find you can kill a lot of birds with one stone when you're driven by anxiety. 

The fence had been worn by the years.  Mossy stains left it speckled and discolored with a slightly green tint.  Cob webs gathered in various corners of the posts and boards. Lady bugs, stink bugs and spiders crept along its rails.  Dust from the newly-combined bean fields added a hint of brown to the already mossy-green white paint.     

I stood at one end of the section, and slowly started, staring down the length of the rows.  Back and forth with the wire brush, going with the grain.  Dust and dirt spraying the air in a cloud of minute particles, the wind carrying them adrift.  Shards and splinters of wood sent flying.  Paint chipped off.  The wood and knots underneath slowly exposed, layers getting rubbed and stripped off.   

My heart and my mind felt like that board fence, like someone took a wire brush to them and maybe used a little too much force.  Splinters.  Dust.  Exposed knots.  Raw emotions.  All of it a little rough around the edges. 

But as I stood next to that fence, and gazed out over that freshly combined field, one thing and one thing only rose up in my mind:  hope.  Hope that it wouldn't always be like this.  Hope that Jesus is who he says he is.  Hope that somehow I would make it through, through the grace of God alone, somehow, someway.  Hope of survival.  Hope of victory. 

And peace.  There arrived peace, sweeping in on the breeze to brush my face and remind my heart that I was not forgotten by God, but rather that he drawn so very near in my deepest hours of need.  Board by board, rail by rail, post by post, I dipped that brush in the thick paint, and breathed a little easier, my anxiety seeming to release its vice-like grip on my chest and my mind.  Still splinters, still dust, still knots.  But slowly, with each passing stroke, clean white paint wiped away all those splinters, and the wind brushed off the dust, and the knots were no longer laid bare.  (Although I may have painted a bug or two accidentally.) 

It took me several days, but I finally finished painting one side of one section of the fence.  I joked with my parents,  "Well, the good news is there's a silver lining to my anxiety - you got yourselves a freshly painted white-board fence out of the whole deal."  There's always a bright side to the trials we face.  We might have to search high and low, but the bright side is there.  And we might have to fight for joy, and we might have to fight to hold onto Jesus, but he is worth every ounce of energy we expend to see to it that we don't let go of him.  Because he sure isn't letting go of us in the midst of the trials. 

I by no means wish for it or want it to happen again, but I suppose if God in his infinite wisdom should allow this season of anxiety to linger, I imagine my parents may just get the other side of their fence painted.   

But I'm content to let it go for now, to leave the other side for another day, and maybe for someone else to paint. 

That white board fence stands as proof - I've still got a pulse.  And I'm still breathing.  And my God is still worthy of praise, even here in this figurative desert that threatens to suck me dry.  And yes, the dust and the knots and the splinters of my life have nearly done me in, but thank God - he makes all things new.

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life. Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you. I will say to the north, 'Give up,' and to the south, 'Do not withhold'; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”   

Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise."
- Isaiah 43:1-7, 16-21