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Last week I went caving. Silly, I know. In college my buddies and I would go all the time, and last week my friend Jesse and I wanted to check it out and see how it looked 10 years later. I neglected to consider how I looked 10 years later though; 40 pounds, a marriage, three kids, a mortgage and a career caused the cave to feel very different than when I was in college. The weight (in one case literally) of life made the cave less exciting and much more terrifying. To be fair to Jesse, I think he was just as fast and fearless as when we were college kids. But for me, the cave was one looping mental video of what would happen with one hand slip or bump on the head.
I have struggled with anxiety, fear and panic in smaller ways throughout my life, but more recently with the addition of the aforementioned list above, I have realized I am a person whose worries and fear can turn into panic attacks, mood swings and depression. The cave last Wednesday brought me dangerously close to having one of those episodes again. Specifically it was wriggling through an especially tight series of granite passageways that triggered the thoughts of what could be lost if I wasn’t able to squeeze my heavier body through the small water-cut holes.
There were two things that saved me from having a full-fledged freak-out moment: the first was my friend Jesse’s light, and the second was the sound of his voice. Feeling the fear of the situation but not feeding that fear by looking to the warmth of my friend’s headlamp and hearing him guide me through each spot in the cave (especially the tight ones) allowed me to stay calm and make it almost all the way through. (In one spot my newly acquired girth made it physically impossible, and at that point I would be lying to say I wasn’t relieved.) No matter how faint Jesse’s light, I could still use it to pinpoint the right route and get through. No matter how loud the voices in my head got, Jesse’s voice was louder as he called to me and verbally steered me in the right direction.
For me that was God’s message. It probably seems cliché, but honestly, at this point in my recovery, cliché is fine with me as long as it is truth. Jesus is our light (John 8:12). He has a wonderful voice (John 10:27). We are not in control and situations in life, whether real or in our heads, have the potential of being very dark and scary (Romans 3:10-18, Ephesians 6:12). We have the tendency to either pretend our world isn’t scary by burying our head in the sand, or we see our fears, struggles and sin as larger than God, and they consume us.
Friend, the message is to trust Him as the light to your life and to listen for His voice. I am so prideful that I not only think I have control, but I love and lust after control. I feel like I have it all covered, but I am only one phone call, accident or doctor’s visit away from having that perception of control crash down. If you are like me, let your weakness and sin come to His light. Let Him expose those dark places of your heart and hard situations to His calm and powerful voice. He is trustworthy.
In 2 Corinthians 5:21, it says Jesus descended into our darkness; He became our sin that we would become His righteousness. He placed our anxiety, failures, lies and idols on His own shoulders and provided us a way out of our “cave” of sin. He willingly entered into the mess and even felt fear and anxiety Himself in the path toward our rescue (Luke 22:44).
He is the light the darkness could not comprehend nor overcome (John 1:5), and His voice is both kind and clear as it leads us toward Him. Remember He is always speaking. Fix your eyes on who He is as you work your way through these dark times, knowing and praising Him for giving you the power for every inch you gain closer to Him (Philippians 2:12-13).