Anxiety and Consolation

Last week, as I was praying with Seeking God’s Face, this verse from Psalm 94 stood out to me: 

When anxiety was great within me,

your consolation brought me joy.

 

As I look toward being able to worship with some of you in person again soon, Lord willing, I’m eager and I’m anxious. I’m afraid that even though we are being cautious and many of us are vaccinated, someone will still get sick. I’m afraid that I have forgotten how to preach to people instead of my phone. I’m afraid I’ll cry my way through the service. I’m afraid it will be really awkward, that I’ve forgotten how to talk to people outside of my family in person and not on Zoom. Or that I will forget to be distanced and accidentally hug people.

 

And I’m afraid that being in our space together again and being masked and spread out will be another reminder that this isn’t all just a bad nightmare - the pandemic is real and we’re still in it and things are not as they were before. Fear of even more feelings of loss. I wasn’t expecting to feel this afraid. And that’s just about the Sunday stuff – there’s the sharing space stuff, the violence in the neighborhood, the racial hatred, the immigrant children at the border, the new violence in Israel and Palestine, the COVID devastation in Nepal and India. It’s easy for anxiety to be ‘great within me.’

 

But I have also been noticing the second part of the verse –‘your consolation brought me joy.’ I looked up the word consolation this morning and noticed that grief is part of the definition – it’s comfort that comes after sorrow. This feels important to me – that in the midst of anxiety we remember how God has comforted us in grief. It seems to me a bit like God giving Noah and all of creation the rainbow as a sign of the promise – something that comes out after rainstorms. The sign of the promise connected to the memory of the disaster.

 

Most mornings I walk with Emma part of the way to Grand Rapids Christian Middle School. We go up to Plymouth together and then I turn around and come back. Often we see Sue DeVries out walking, and one morning this week she stopped me on my way back and said, ‘I was thinking when I saw you walking with Emma today, about when she was such a tiny baby on oxygen.’

And all of a sudden, I was back almost 14 years ago, in those days of great fear and anxiety, of sorrow and disappointment. I could feel it in my body the rest of the way home. Remembering walking that same sidewalk with her on my front and her oxygen tank and heart monitor on my back. And remembering how lots of other Boston Square folks were also in and out of the hospital when Emma was – how many of us were going through such hard stuff. And remembering how we were praying and wondering if Boston Square Church had a future together or if it was time to close.

I’ve been remembering the grief and the fear of that time and I’ve been remembering that things are different now. And it feels like seeing a rainbow. Consolation bringing joy.

 

I’ve been consoled, remembering how God can heal and sustain life. I’ve been consoled, remembering how that tiny struggling baby is now taller than me and we are still walking together. I’ve been consoled, remembering how the others who were sick then are also alive and well all these years later. I’ve been remembering the painful losses and the answers to prayer we’ve seen at Boston Square. And I’ve been consoled, remembering how God has been faithful to us and to God’s church – sending just what we need, just in time.

 

When anxiety was great within me,

your consolation brought me joy.