Devotion: Chronic Anxiety
Please take the time to read Psalm 46
I’ve always carried my problems like a weight only I can bear. Maybe it’s because I’m an only child. But There was a time, when I was a fifth grader, that the girls in my class weren’t getting along and I’m guessing the boys weren’t either. And we certainly didn’t know how to get along with the opposite sex and so we didn’t. We picked on the kids we didn’t like, and everyone took their turn at not being liked at some point or another. I imagine our teacher, Ms. Cotton, got tired of watching this all play out in her classroom. I vividly remember coming in from noon recess one day, after I’m sure someone’s feelings had been hurt, or worse, and her standing in front of the room with something important to say. She told us that we didn’t have to like everyone in the class, but we had to respect everyone for who they were. People are different. That’s the way it is. Go ahead and not like someone. What was not ok was being unkind to that person.
To this eleven-year old kid, it was mind blowing. Up until that point every teacher – heck, probably every adult – had told me that I had to like everyone in my class all of the time…and here’s the thing – I didn’t. And I felt a little guilty. But here was an adult reframing reality in a way that made much more sense to me than what I had been told up to that point.
In the staff/council retreat a couple of weeks ago, Jimmy Carnes began by saying that God is his most precious belief but not his most deeply held belief. Wait, what? God isn’t his most deeply held belief? And if He’s not, isn’t God supposed to be? He said he has a list of his most deeply held beliefs – including his need for perfection – that get in the way of his most precious belief, his relationship with God.
Wait a second, me too! Although I didn’t know it until Jimmy said that. Well I did know it, I just didn’t know how to frame it and would have never said out loud, in a church retreat, to a room full of people, that God wasn’t my most deeply held belief without feeling a well…a little guilty. It was freeing, if not exactly mind blowing, to have language and permission to talk about beliefs that are (sometimes much) more deeply held than my belief in God and how to manage them to bridge the gap in my relationship with God.
And while it may have taken me until today years old to frame it in this manner, God already knew. As Pastor Greg reminded us in his sermon, Steve Cuss talks about in his book, The Expectation Gap, God is in the future. God is where we are going and working there. God was already waiting for me, and perhaps you too, to name what gets in the way of our relationship with Him and to utilize tools to manage it.
If you haven’t read The Expectation Gap by Steve Cuss yet, make sure it’s in your TBR pile. You will see yourself in this book. You will see God in this book. You will find a tool or two or three to use to bridge gaps in your relationship with God. And as our relationship with God deepens, we will come to understand more fully that He is our refuge and strength, an ever-present in trouble (and when we are anxious for any reason.) We can do this! By minding the gap, we can bridge the gap in our relationship with God.
Good, Gracious and Generous God –
Thank you for teachers who teach more than what is in textbooks. Thank you for churches and church leaders who are willing to talk about gaps in our relationship with you out loud and without judgement. Thank you for walking ahead and being where we are going – always.
In your name we pray, Amen.
Written by Dacia Kruse
Dacia lives in Lincoln. She is a lobbyist and mediator through The Mediation Center where she primarily works with parents who are separating and trying to figure out how to co-parent their kids.
She has been a member of Sheridan since the late 1990’s and is new to the Sheridan Church Council. She regularly attends Theology Roundtable and serves on a Saturday evening hospitality team, the Sunday morning Welcome Center team and as a Wedding Coordinator. In her free time, she likes to read, travel, shop and decorate her house.