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safe, even when you don’t feel safe

Begin to believe, and hold on to it steadfastly, that He has taken that which you have surrendered to Him. You positively must not wait to feel either that you have given yourself, or that God has taken you. You must simply believe it, and reckon it to be the case.

—Hannah Whitall Smith,
A Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life

Two weeks after John and I returned home from our honeymoon, we joined a few other adults and a group of about twenty-five high school students on a weeklong mission trip to Washington, DC. I had never been to the nation’s capital, and it was exciting to see all the historic landmarks in person. On the way home as we traveled south down I-95, my friend Jimmy directed everyone to look out the van window. “That’s the Pentagon to our right,” he said. “Take a good look—it’s the most highly secure and protected building in the world.”

That was in July 2001.

Two months later, the building where people felt the most secure turned out to be a very insecure place. In a horrible, unthinkable act of terrorism, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon after being hijacked. Everyone on board died as well as over one hundred people in the building. They felt safe, but it turns out they weren’t.

Feeling safe does not guarantee safety.

Control

Most days, I conduct my business under the illusion of control. I make decisions about what to have for dinner and where to send my kids to school and how to juggle my time. For the most part, the days pass in a predictable pattern and there is an underlying sense that I have things under control. I feel safe most of the time.

One particular Monday evening, my family and I had just finished a nice dinner together at a restaurant near our house. As we loaded the kids into our car, John teased me about buying coats for looks rather than warmth, and I teased him for having twelve fleece pullovers. We laughed as we entered the busy intersection.

And then another car ran a red light and our safe, warm family car spun out of control.

The illusion was shattered.

A scream escaped without my permission.

Our kids began to cry.

I stared into a smoky nothing, confused as to why the cloudy view through the windshield was of the restaurant we had just left rather than the opposite side of the street where we should have been.

Things were not as they should be.

I heard the familiar sound of my own voice speaking with a calm that didn’t reach my heart as I unsuccessfully attempted to convince our girls everything was okay.

Later, we watched as our car was towed away, and I considered the vulnerability of humanity. How one moment you are laughing with the love of your life—lighthearted, safe, and normal. And in the midst of those happy sounds, your life is interrupted with an event that is totally beyond your control.

We walked away from that busy intersection with barely a scratch, though our car was totaled beyond repair. I was able to remain calm in the midst of the emergency, but a few hours later as we headed to bed, the anxiety caught up with me, strong and heavy. I lay awake until three in the morning, stricken with worry about what could have been. It was as though my room was filled up with fear and I was taking it in with deep breaths, allowing the dark gray of uncertainty to swirl within me and settle deep inside. The what-ifs were haunting, pulling against my attempts to trust. What if the other car had been going even faster? What if it had been bigger? What if one of my kids . . . ? What if my husband . . . ?

Was I safe? Yes, I was safe. Was my family safe? Yes, they were safe too. Did I feel safe? No. I felt far from safe. Safe felt like a not-so-funny joke, a faraway reality for other people that would never again be true for me. In the midst of the fear, I sensed the Lord reminding me to rest. I prayed for the anxiety to pass. It didn’t. Not for a long time, anyway. So I waited. He waited with me.

He never promises that our families will be safe. Not in the way we think. He does promise his presence, though. And if you don’t know him, you may think that is a bad trade-off. There are times when that is how it feels. I want my children. I want my husband. Today I have them all. But control? The idea that I actually have a hand in the way things will go? The veil has been lifted on that illusion.

I am learning more about what it means to have the presence of the Creator of the Universe with me wherever I go. It is important to know I’m not alone, especially in those moments when my life and the lives of those I love are revealed to be vulnerable. Feeling insecure does not always mean you are unsafe, just as feeling safe does not always mean you are safe.

In other words, I can’t count on the feelings because they aren’t always right. And I may have to redefine what it means to be safe.

My only option is to trust in the One who holds all things together, even when they fall apart. To trust even when it doesn’t feel true. To believe in safety even when I don’t feel safe. To set my mind on what is true even when it feels foolish and naïve.

One of the hardest times to remember God’s truth is in the midst of strong emotion. Fear, worry, or even excitement can cloud our perception of truth. If it doesn’t feel true, it’s hard to believe it is true.

My Two-Faced Soul

It is so difficult to live contrary to how I feel. That is, until my feelings change. On Monday I feel hopeless to ever plan a good meal with twin babies around, yet on Tuesday I take them both to the grocery store and make a completely enjoyable, healthy meal. I feel fat and ugly on Tuesday night, but strong and full of potential on Wednesday morning. I feel bored and uninspired on Wednesday night, and I plant tulips with a smile on Thursday morning.

My feelings on the soul level will tug and jerk and pull all over. But God is constant, and he put his Spirit within me. My old nature died along with Jesus on the cross, and then he gave me new life in him: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor. 5:17 NIV).

I don’t have to live in a state of reacting to whatever my emotions tell me. I can make choices based on the truth and watch as my emotions change. The feelings will eventually change so I can experience the freedom that is mine. As long as I am busy protecting myself, it is difficult for me to experience the life of Christ. As long as I am trapped in the duality of my soul, I will continue to believe the lie that I am what I do, that I cannot act contrary to how I feel. Sometimes I have to take the mask off before I feel safe. I have to risk not knowing and trust that God knows.

When it was time for the Israelites to finally enter the Promised Land, the only thing standing in their way was the Jordan River. God promised Joshua that he would give them every place where they set their feet. The first place their feet were to be set? Right into the waters of the Jordan River. God did not tell them to wait until the waters parted and then walk through on dry ground. The priests were to stand in the river before the waters would part. They would receive the promise, but first they had to get wet.

To Live Free

To experience victory, you absolutely positively cannot wait until you feel safe. Emotions don’t have a brain. They are reactors. They may respond to truth, but they may also respond to lies with the same passion and conviction, sometimes more so. You must decide if you will trust the feeling or if you will trust the truth.

In the first nine chapters of this book, we explored the common masks good girls tend to hide behind. In other words, those chapters describe in detail what it looks like when we depend on ourselves to try to make life work instead of depending on Jesus. When your safety is challenged and you recognize that familiar tug to pull out your girl-made mask, ask yourself these four questions instead:

What is the truth? (Spirit)

What will you believe? (Mind)

What will you do? (Will)

Will you give up the right to feel as if God’s truth is true? (Emotions)[42]

After a long weekend of feeling bad about myself for a five-pound weight gain, I went to a gathering at the home of a friend. Her home was beautiful. The women were also beautiful and stylish, with nice hair and big diamonds. Their jeans fit them just right and their teeth were so very white. It may have been easier to handle if they were rude and snobby like the mean girls in the movies. But they were all so very kind: fun, lovely women with beautiful homes and welcoming hearts.

I sat wilted in that room, surrounded by all that perfection. I felt lazy, ugly, and less-than. Deep inside, I had an urge to run, or to prove ways that I was better even though I felt so much worse. I was a Jesus-loving grown-up, slumped over in a puddle of stretch-mark self-pity. I felt decidedly un-free and un-safe.

In that moment, in the middle of all that mess, I had a fleeting, initially unwelcome thought: What is the truth here?

In the midst of wallowing emotions, this question is not one I feel like considering. It takes practice, purpose, and faith. But this question will be the bridge for you between the lie and the truth. If you do not stop to answer this question, you will live in default mode. Your life will be a series of earthly, predictable reactions to people and circumstances. You will either hide behind your mask in fear or rip it off in rebellion, anger, and bitterness at the world you have allowed to spin crazy around you. Instead, remember the questions.

What is the truth? Even though I may feel unsafe and unacceptable, I am accepted in Christ—not because of how much I weigh, but because of how much he loves.

What will you choose to believe? I choose to believe God rather than my feelings. I choose to believe I am acceptable even though I feel unacceptable.

What will you choose to do? I will choose to depend on Christ as my sufficiency and act as an accepted person rather than sit in a corner of self-pity. I will choose to allow God’s definition of my acceptance to trump my own.

Will you give up the right to feel as if God’s truth is true? I will choose to continue to depend on Christ even though I don’t yet feel acceptable. I choose to release the right to manage others’ opinions of me and rest in the sufficiency of the life of Christ.

Don’t deny the feelings, but realize it takes no faith to stay in the feelings. They are like the screen saver that comes up when the computer is inactive. It is the automatic response, the natural response. You cannot set your mind on two things at once. Thoughts may come fast and furious, but they only come one at a time. Feelings generally follow what our minds are set on. We get to choose.

Behind all our masks, true safety always seems slightly out of reach, just beyond the next decision, the next relationship, the next baby, the next house, the next job. The next. Always the next.

If I could just stay home with my kids . . .

If I could just go back to work . . .

If I could just get pregnant . . .

If I could just get out of debt . . .

If only I had a college degree . . .

If only I could lose this weight . . .

Jesus is the radical, absolutely complete, living answer to all our if-onlys and if-I-could-justs. His unwavering, unchanging, unconditional love and acceptance of us is what we are really looking for.

“For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete” (Col. 2:9–10, emphasis added). When my patience is gone, he offers to be patience for me. When my strength is spent, he becomes strength in me. When my faith is small, he believes on my behalf. Every time.

Recently, I shared some of my own frustrations about the struggles I have between my feelings and my thoughts with my dear friend, mentor, and counselor, Steve Lynam. I loved what he had to say about my feeling self: “As your spirit communes with the Spirit of God, he plants seeds of desire in your heart and then leads you according to his will. And he will work within you such that you will begin to desire what he desires. When you do what would really please you, you are actually obeying God!”

Then, he reminded me of Psalm 23:3 where David says simply, “He restores my soul.” As we now know, our soul is our mind, our will, and our emotions. He restores all three on my behalf and for his good pleasure. Both our minds and our emotions are in the process of restoration. As we set our minds on truth, our emotions are being renewed as well.

Sometimes when we talk about setting our minds on truth, our feelings and emotions are painted in a negative light. I am still learning what it means to embrace my emotional self and not hide behind my fake fines, while at the same time learning to set my mind on God’s truth even when my emotions tell me otherwise. I know God has designed me to feel deeply and fully. Sometimes those emotions lead me in truth and sometimes they don’t. I still haven’t figured out the perfect balance between those things, but I’m thankful that in Christ, I don’t have to. I believe him when he says he is restoring my soul, and I trust him to lead me in the paths of righteousness.

The Truth No Matter What

In this spinning, contradictory, upside-down world, Scripture is the only place to find truth. Sometimes I imagine a world where God’s answers to me are personalized, wrapped up in plastic, and delivered to my driveway every morning like the USA Today. And I unwrap it while I drink my coffee and soak up my custom-made daily dose of the colored newsprint.

Scripture truth takes effort, digging, and faith. Jesus’ truth doesn’t come in color, at least not at first. But as I sit with him, as I listen to the words he speaks and let them sink down deep and wide into me, the black and white begins to dance. And like Dorothy opening up the farmhouse door, God’s truth paints vibrant, brilliant colors with large, confident strokes on the walls of my soul. His Spirit testifies with my spirit. Yes! This is true, they say together. And I begin to practice his truth as my truth, regardless of the feelings that fleet and fly.

With the prophet Isaiah, I know that when I walk through the fire, I will not be burned. When I pass through the waters, Jesus will be with me (see Isa. 43:2). Scripture does not say I will not get wet; it says he will be with me. And he is. I need not fear; redemption is true.

Along with the psalmist I can sing of stillness and of knowing that the Lord, he is God (see Ps. 46). God does not say “be still and feel like I am God.” He says be still, cease striving, make space . . . and know. Know it as sure as oxygen and gravity. We have a fortress, a refuge, a safe place. His name is Jesus.

In his name I can do all things, not with strength that comes from visible me, but with impossible strength from invisible him. He does not simply give me strength, he envelops and embodies peacefulness and strength in me and through me and around me.

In Galatians 5, God says through the apostle Paul that the fruit of his Spirit is amazing love, inexpressible joy, overwhelming peace, unending patience, warm kindness, authentic goodness, complete faithfulness, unadulterated gentleness, and Jesus-empowered self-control. I have been given this Spirit. I do not have to work hard, try hard, or make effort to earn this Spirit. As a believer in Jesus Christ—in his death, burial, and resurrection—the truth about Jesus’ acceptance before the Father is true about me. He receives me.

John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, tells us that there was a beginning. And in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God (John 1). Jesus is the beginning and the end, and he is indeed the Word. He is the word I need to hear when I need to hear it. He is the One who calms me, comforts me, rejoices over me with love, and delights over me with songs of joy.

Like the sheep in Psalm 23, I may walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but I will fear no evil because he is with me. I will not stop, lie down, or die in that valley. I will walk through and I will not walk through alone. He restores my soul.

Like Paul, I know that I have been crucified with Christ and I—the one who wears the masks and tries to make this dead life work—that me no longer lives, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in this body, I live by faith in the One who loves me and gave himself for me (see Gal. 2:20).

In the end, I don’t want to see Jesus fully and in person, look expectantly toward him to finally receive the freedom and rest of my salvation, and hear him say, Sweet daughter, you have had it all along, but you chose not to believe. You have had abundance, but you have lived in want. I gave you freedom, but you lived in chains. I gave you forgiveness, but you lived with guilt. I gave you completeness, but you hid behind your girl-made masks and pretend identities.

So let’s choose life. Before it’s too late, choose life and love and freedom. It is yours for the taking.

Still, doubt creeps in.

This may be true for everyone else, but not for me.

Yes, for you.

It can’t be for me.

Even if you were the only one.

It is too good to be true.

Indeed. I am the only good that is true.

God, who is all-knowing, all-powerful, loving, kind, gentle, strong, and forgiving—he lives. And he chooses to live in me. If I have his resources available to me, if I have God himself available to me, not just to help but to do, then I can indeed bear all things, hope all things, and endure all things.

I can live victoriously in the midst of the dry, arid, hopeless desert in which I sometimes find myself. In that place where water doesn’t flow and there is no rest, where it seems his voice can’t reach, I am challenged to trust him before I see the river, before I hear songs of love. And so I believe, and then I wait. I first believe the truth is true, and then I wait to feel it.

One of my favorite pictures of safety in Scripture comes from Psalm 139:5–6, where David says, “You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it.”

Imagine a day when you are overwhelmed beyond what you thought you could ever bear. Perhaps you just discovered a loved one is sick. Or you have a child who is living contrary to what you know is good for her. Or your husband just lost his job. Maybe you are simply having one of those days where you woke up in a funk. The house is a wreck, the laundry is piled high, the fridge is empty, and it’s raining. And you feel fat. Imagine that day. Maybe you don’t have to imagine. Maybe you’re living that day right now.

Sometimes in those days, it helps to remember that God has enclosed me behind. That means everything in my past—every situation, circumstance, pain, fear, and longing I’ve ever had—he has been a barrier between those things and me. The Hebrew word translated as “behind” is also used in Scripture to mean “west.” And he has also enclosed me before, meaning forward, front, or everlasting. It can also mean “east.” East and west are opposites forever. They have no beginning, no ending, and they never meet one another. He covers my yesterday and he holds my tomorrow. Still, this present moment is where I live. What about today?

He has enclosed me forever in the past and forever in the future. And then he lays his hand upon me in the great right now. The New Living Translation says it this way: “You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head.” Imagine a hero who not only leads the way but also brings up the rear and holds your hand all at the same time. I can’t imagine a safer place than that.

The Mask Removal

There is no magic formula to living life free of masks. There is no automatic mask remover. The masks will never disappear completely as long as we live in a fallen world. I have days where it feels as if my only option is to pull out those well-worn masks and move through life in survival mode, content to be good and invisible. But I can’t stay there for long, because I have tasted freedom. I know the truth about the rescue; about the way Jesus came into this war-torn world to save me; about the tragic, horrific way he died; about the blood and life he sacrificed so I wouldn’t have to. I also know that he didn’t stay dead. He rose up again and lives in me this day. And now that actually means something. His Spirit united with my spirit makes every difference. There is nothing I can do to get more of him. I have been given everything I need for life and godliness (2 Pet. 1:3).

Jesus Saves is not just a religious slogan; it is my present-day reality. He saves me from every girl-made inclination I have to make this life work and from the fleshly mask I hide behind when it doesn’t. He saves me from my failures as well as my successes. He saves me from the shame of my mistakes as well as the pride of my achievements. He saves me from trying to suck life out of the accolades this world has to offer by placing me safely in him, hidden with Christ in God.

All he asks is that I receive him. Not just for salvation, like when I was seven. But to receive the inheritance of victory that is mine today. And after I receive him, he asks that I remain in him, like a trusting daughter refusing to leave her daddy’s lap. Worship and service flow out in response from that safe, secure place of abiding in his presence. And even though there will be waves of temptation to keep the glory for myself or cower away in shame, and even though worry and anxiety will continue to scream at me when I am most vulnerable, the most important, life-changing thing this good girl can do is to remember to remember.

Remember you have a choice. Remember to let peace rule. Remember to believe God’s truth even when it doesn’t feel true. Remember that your life is hidden with Christ in God, you no longer have to manufacture your own safe places. And when we forget to remember? We don’t have to travel over mountains and rough terrain to get back to God. Simply receive and believe that the truth is still true, and purpose to stay safely inside him.

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. (Eph. 3:20–21)

Behind the Mask

In Psalm 139, David says that God has enclosed him behind and before. He says that God’s hand has been laid upon him. As you lay your masks aside and stand vulnerably exposed, do you sense a desperate need to be enclosed? In what areas or circumstances of your life right now do you sense this need the most?

As you stand in that vulnerable place, ask yourself: What is the truth? What will I choose to believe? What will I choose to do? Will I give up the right to feel as if God’s truth is true?