🙌 It's the Friday Call to Worship! 🙌

My husband bared his greatest life struggle in his sermon on anxiety this Sunday. He was even more candid than I expected with the painful details of his battle and the toll it took on our marriage. The first 5 years of our 5 3/4 year marriage were the hardest of our lives. We were hard-pressed on every side, literally facing life and death.

I spent much of those years trembling with fear, overcome with "what if's" and "why God's". It wasn't what I signed up for in this faithful life of following Him. My prayers were panicked, fanning the flame of my own anxieties. But, there was a turning point at rock bottom, when there was nothing left to pray and no more I could do. My life had to be about more than if he was ok, my fairy-tale dreams, and what the future held. If it wasn't about more, then what was the point of it all?

Today, I am more free than I could have been without our journey. Joy comes quickly - and it's deep. My spirit feels strong - unshakeable. It's promised that life will keep coming with all of its bangs and blows, but I've been to the bottom of it. I found the rawest, realest Jesus there in the place where my expectations and abilities were stripped away. I found the secret to life is the joy of loving without expectation, completely poured out to this life and filled by Living Water.

The bottom shapes you. The Healer holds you. It's where the power you need to live through what you're living through is perfected and accessible. (2 Cor 12:9) Wherever you are standing now, look. Look for Him there. Listen to Phil Wickham's "Where I'm Standing Now".

To hear Chris' journey with anxiety, click here and begin at 25 minutes.