An anchor for the Soul

Sometimes life can open up a torrent like floodwaters crashing through, sweeping away all sense of security or constancy.  We find ourselves clinging for life to whatever we can grab onto.  Perhaps we find ourselves washed downstream holding on to what used to be the roof of our home, our safe haven.  Life can be like that.  That phone call in the middle of the night, that knock at the door, continue to send shivers up my spine to this day, even years later.  I remember that I wouldn’t answer the door for anyone, still don’t most days.  The blow that came at the knock on the door one night, has seared into my mind the changeableness of life.  I still feel uneasy leafing through the mail each day, I do it because I need to, but I still don’t like it.  I remember suffering from such fear, after my first child was born, and my husband worked on night shift.  I was frozen in bed, wondering how I would get my baby out of the house, if someone broke in.  I couldn’t sleep, I left the TV on for company.  

Anxiety paints pictures of worst case scenarios in our minds.  it creates rivers of weariness and we try to paddle upstream against it’s raging torrents.  It’s so hard to realize that we really have very little control over our lives. Having that rug ripped out from underneath my feet, was the rudest wake-up call I’ve ever known.  Weariness just wraps around me like a blanket sometimes from the battles in my mind.  I could never hold out, if I didn’t have God to hold on to.  I know He’s in control, and I know everything will be okay, but I just wonder how much I,myself, can take.  When fear and anxiety hit, I try to get in the boat of God’s Word and tell myself the truth.  I think it is interesting that God’s Word says, “Hope is the anchor of our souls.”

“Therefore we who have fled to God for refuge can have confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us.  This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.  It leads us through the curtain into God’s Inner Sanctuary.  Jesus has already gone in there for us.”         (Hebrews 6:18b-20a)

I think I was expecting more stability in the physical realm, the realm where my body dwells, then there will ever be.  God’s hope is an anchor for our souls.  Our circumstances, bodies, relationships, etc. will all be changing, nothing is constant except God.  I think I was trying to hold onto things that were ever transient.  When I hold on to God and His promise.  I am at peace within, even when everything outside of me is swirling out of control.  I just learn to go deeper in to the realms of the soul, God’s Inner Sanctuary, the only source of true Hope.