e179 I am Shaken, Lord (I miss my dog.)

Here’s the gist, human. I miss my dog. I spent the last two years deeply anxious about losing her. I prayed for a circumstance, a manageable outcome, a long runway to losing her, a prolonged exit that would let us down gently into a daily life without her. That didn’t happen. 

Truth is, anxiety isolates us from God. That should be an unbearable separation. If I had given my anxiety about losing my wheaten girl to God along the way, and petitioned for his presence, instead of petitioning for an outcome—to give me more time with her, to heal her—I could draw more fully on his presence now. 

That is the scope of anxiety across our lives, when it tightens its grip so much so that we are spiritually stalled from preparing for life’s earthly trials. 

So I am banging on God’s door, asking God to be my fortress. I petition him to take me in, to fortify my heart in my grieving so I can say “I will never be shaken.” 

Join us. E179.

This is Faith to Witness 99, motivating us to hear God and share the Shepherd.

Season 3 Episode 179 I am Shaken, Lord (I miss my dog)

In e178 we gained clarity on what anxiety is, and how God asks us to deal with it. We considered the measure of its range and reach within the human heart, and what it takes to submit ourselves to God’s persuasion of our heart when anxiety rises. A prayer life that seeks communion with God gives us the opportunity to lay down our anxious thoughts at the feet of Jesus. 

Our anchor passage.

Philippians 4:6

6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 

For a quick summary of last week’s episode, the Greek word for anxiety is merimnaō (mer-im-nah’-o). Ellicott’s Commentary defines it as “that painful anxiety which is inevitable in all who feel themselves alone in mere self-dependence amidst the difficulties and dangers of life.” 

Simply, that we feel alone in the struggles we face. This feeds anxiety.

We considered the exposition of Philippians 4:6 by Maclaren who notes that Paul was in the throws of persecution and tough times, chained to the Roman enemy, but never abandoning the Gospel. 

Maclaren explains what anxiety is, what it does:  That the literal translation of the anxiety is “‘Be careful for nothing.’” and it is “the nervous irritation of a gnawing anxiety which, as the word in the original means, tears the heart apart and makes a man quite incapable of doing the wise thing, or seeing the wise thing to do, in the circumstances.”

What sticks for me is the descriptor, “gnawing anxiety” that demands we go it alone. Because that is what anxiety does: it holds us captive to our self-dependence. It separates us from God’s power because anxiety is not from God. Ours is not an anxious God. He has no need for it.

The Heart is Never Empty

Maclaren asks us to consider this:  

He says, “The heart is never empty. If not full of God, it will be full of the world, and of worldly care. Luther says somewhere that a man’s heart is like a couple of millstones; if you don’t put something between them to grind, they will grind each other. It is because God is not in our hearts that the two stones rub the surface off one another. So the victorious antagonist of anxiety is trust, and the only way to turn gnawing care out of my heart and life is to usher God into it, and to keep him resolutely in it.”

He defines prayer as a “much higher region of communion” through prayers of silent submission, prayers of quiet trust, and prayers of still fruition, that when we bring our anxieties to his throne, they disappear into his nature. 

Something like that. 

So I asked us to call anxiety exactly what it is. Let’s name it to God. A petition of the heart. That we take it to him, and let him measure the depth of our anxiety against the scope of its reach in our life. Because our God is sovereign. 

I am Shaken, Lord

So this just got personal. I let a gnawing anxiety of the past two years live within my self-dependence:  my most ever-present, most immediate worry, the anxiety that ran through pretty much every moment of my day, 24/7. I held on tight to “caring” for this worry on my own. 

This anxiety was fueled by my love for my dog. I was emotionally, physically and psychologically invested in caring for, feeding my anxiety about losing her. How, and when. 

This anxiety relentlessly gnawed at the edges of my heart, until it came true. 

And I was not prepared for it.

In my selfish quest to manage this anxiety, as Maclaren deftly characterized, my heart was grinding in its own futility. 

I prayed for a circumstance, a manageable outcome, a long runway to losing her, a prolonged exit that would give us time to comfort her slipping and let us down gently into a daily life without her. 

But that didn’t happen. As I record this I realize I cannot share the details. Not now. But King David had something to say that calls out how I am feeling. Actually, the opposite of how I am feeling. 

In Psalm 62 he opens with a confident stance in his God. He begins with this: 

Psalm 62

For the director of music. For Jeduthun. A psalm of David.

1 

Truly my soul finds rest in God;
    my salvation comes from him.

2 

Truly he is my rock and my salvation;
    he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.

David says he will never be shaken. Because he knows who he depends on for life’s outcomes. But because I held on tight to my anxiety over the possibility of losing my dog, when I did, the fall was long and hard, and the grieving was without spiritual defense. The fall is long and hard.

Because I chose to live alone with my anxiety. Now I am shaken. 

 God, Please Measure My Anxiety By My Love

I couldn’t give my anxiety to God before we lost our sweet wheaten, so now I am petitioning God to take over, to take measure of the depth and scope of my anxiety by my love for her. 

My heart is grinding. 

I am shaken to the core. 

She is our 24/7 girl forever. There were very few moments in our life with her over ten years—from Los Angeles to New York City to the Outer Banks to inland North Carolina—that she wasn’t with us. She was part of everything. 

She helped make 175 episodes of this podcast. 

When I came across Psalm 62:1-2 I was stopped in my tracks. Then David repeats his affirmation again in verse 6. “I will not be shaken.”

So when Paul says give everything to God with prayer and petition, I know what my petition is. Asking God to pull me out of this spiritual quicksand. Because when I say that I am shaken I mean nothing is stable, nothing seems familiar. I knew early in my life that God gave me a rallying spirit, the ability to respond to life with resilience. Yet, in this time, I have no rally. I am shaken because I feel things I never feel. I am processing daily life in a fearful, foreign way.

Feeling lost and defeated by an anxiety that came true. Life has taken me by my shoulders and given me a senseless, seismic shaking. 

I am frustrated that I can’t share details about my beautiful soft-coated wheaten girl. I knew I would have to get into this moment to know how far I could go. I can’t possibly represent her well. I can’t capture how she loved me, how she loved us, and have any sense of comfort from sharing it with anyone. It’s just too precious. I have told very few people that we even lost her. I can’t trust how I will feel about anyone’s response. That the words people choose to comfort me will fall short of the love I have for her. 

Because right now, I feel my heart grinding with grief.

This grieving has gone deeper than any I have ever experienced. There are childhood reasons for that. It explains why Psalm 62 got my attention. Because I know that I can’t echo David’s affirmation right now. 

Because I am shaken to the core.

The Impact of Separation Anxiety

I have given my messy, overgrown anxiety to God. I did it the moment I lost her. It was unbearable to hold on to what my anxiety felt like in reality. God is showing me how unmanageable, unrelenting anxiety is, how when we invest in it, assign our free will to it, we deny God’s ability to strengthen us for when an anticipated fear we harbor actually comes true. 

Stay with me human. I am working my way to what I want to share today. What I can illuminate about my grieving process has to do with a deeper understanding of what separation is. The earthly permanence of having lef this world. 

I feel closed off, separated by her absence. I can’t get to her. But I keep trying to. Perhaps I should tell you how many times during every day I reached for her. Or how many times a day she came to me with her nonverbal asks, comforts, and grins. I am claustrophobic by nature, fighting a feeling of being trapped. Living without her is like living in the dark, trapped in a life without her.

So that’s what I want us to think about. That the feeling I have right now, the separation from a living being that I feel such a desperate need for, is a too-hard lesson about being separated from God. What that is like, when it takes hold of your spiritual shoulders and gives you a good shaking.

By God’s measure, this is the reach of my anxiety .

I am learning about separation by losing my dog. You may not be a dog lover, but for all of us, it is anything that causes your heart to grind without God in the middle of it. Because the heart is never empty. 

We will grind.

Petition God for His Presence

Anxiety isolates us from God. That should be an unbearable separation. And separation is the controlling conflict throughout God’s story. Being in God’s presence is about living in, abiding in his Son’s nature. Anxiety has no place. If I had given my anxiety about losing my wheaten girl to God over the past two years, and petitioned for his presence, instead of petitioning for an outcome—to give me more time with her, to heal her—I could draw more fully on his presence now. 

This tells us something about the scope of anxiety across our lives when it tightens its grip so much that it suffocates our spiritual growth for life’s trials. By spiritual growth I mean a deeper relationship with our Maker. How God strengthens us, prepares us when we give him our anxiety.

So I am banging on God’s door, asking God to be my fortress. I am petitioning him to take me in, to fortify my heart in my grieving so I can say “I will never be shaken.”  God, help me trust you.

Verse 2 beckons me.

2 

Truly he is my rock and my salvation;
    he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.

Anxiety does not change or prevent the future. 

Anxiety does not make us more spiritually prepared.

Anxiety does not prepare us for the heartache that comes with loss and separation.

But God does. He comes between our earthly grinding. He stops the grinding. In our grieving, he shows us how to honor what we have loved and lost in this life.  And frankly, he shows us how to work through deep sadness and gives us a path to go on.

As much as I want to curl up into a spiritual mess in one of her favorite places, it is not what she would do. She would show up, and love. 

God is showing me how to honor my wheaten girl. There are so many people who have lost their way because they are claiming self-dependence in how they deal with their trials in life. With no God to petition, to come to their aid. This is why we witness. Because the heart is never empty, because it grinds, we should go to them. They are out there, human.