Calm My Anxious Heart

In my family, the same old stories are told over and over again. And every single time, no matter how many times we've heard the story, we laugh just as hard as though it were just happening. One of these stock stories is about my Uncle Lance-- I might butcher some of the details, but I've got the gist of it.

Lance and my mom are two of four siblings. As you can imagine, with four children comes many stories-- and often four different versions of the same story. This particular story took place in a hotel in New York City, I believe, and involved Lance, a little magic, and a lot of disappointment. Again, I'm a little blurry on the details (I have a feeling this blog might come to Lance's attention eventually, so I want to put out as many disclaimers as possible), but my understanding is that somehow Lance came to believe that he controlled the lights in the hotel room. By sheer coincidence, perhaps, he snapped his fingers at the same time someone else hit the switch. I'm sure it seemed obvious enough to him: with the snap of his fingers, the light was under his command. Whoever was actually flipping the switch-- Uncle Linc, maybe?-- kept it up a time or two before letting Lance in on the joke. Imagine his disappointment when he realized he wasn't in control at all. In fact, everyone else knew he wasn't in control and simply stifled their laughs as they watched him experiment with his new "power."

Tonight I realized that's what my relationship with God is like. I go around snapping my fingers and expecting stuff to happen... occasionally it actually happens, and I come to the "logical" conclusion that I'm wielding a pretty powerful force of nature. But more often than not, I look up to realize that I'm not in control at all.

Lately I've struggled a lot with contentment, and I can tell you exactly what has led to my lack of contentment: my lack of control. I get these ideas of what my life is or what it should be, and when it doesn't go quite that way, any hint of contentment goes flying out the window. By no coincidence, the perfect book fell into my lap this semester... when I first heard of it in January, I had no idea just how desperate for Truth I'd be come February. And by March, it was my lifeboat in a sea of doubt and disillusion.

The book is called Calm My Anxious Heart, and it's written by Linda Dillow. I first heard about it one Sunday morning in church when the pastor announced that the women's Bible study group would be going through the 12-week Bible study on Tuesday mornings. Less than a month later, another friend recommended that I read it as it was opening her eyes to so much. Honestly, I didn't want to read it. This sounds crazy, but I don't think I wanted to be content... I don't think I wanted my heart to be calmed. I was angry and bitter, and I wanted to be angry and bitter. Somehow I had convinced myself that I deserved to be angry and bitter. I said things and yelled things at God and about God that scare me now-- and by "scare me," I mean it's a wonder I wasn't smited into a million little pieces. But the Lord pursued my heart until I dropped my defenses, and I think He used Dillow's book to romance me right back into His arms, even if I didn't think I wanted to be romanced.

These are a few of my favorite quotes and passages. Hope they bring someone out there a little peace and contentment.

"I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking."
--George MacDonald

One chapter of the book is devoted to focusing on the Lord and having a "life purpose statement" that reflects and encourages this focus (mine is 2 Timothy 1:12 if anyone's curious), and this is Betty Scott Stam's:
"Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes, all my own desires and hopes, and accept Thy will for my life. I give myself, my life, my all utterly to Thee to be Thine forever. Fill me and seal me with Thy Holy Spirit. Use me as Thou wilt, send me where Thou wilt, work out Thy whole will in my life at any cost, now and forever."

"The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith. The beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety."
-- George Muller

"The load of tomorrow added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes even the strongest woman crumble."
-- Linda Dillow, ch. 8

"When what ifs come into our lives, we must ask ourselves if we're going to judge God by the circumstances we don't understand or judge the circumstances in light of the character of God."
--Linda Dillow, ch. 10

"Neither go back in fear and misgiving to the past, nor in anxiety and forecasting to the future, but lie quiet under His hand, having no will but His."
-- H.E. Manning

Read this book. Subtle enough?