Peace will be your Governor

Nuru got sick a few days ago. This somewhat rare skin infection on her nose emerged and it has surprisingly thrust me into a state of utter fear and worry.

I know she's just a dog...but she's my dog...my dog child. The other living being I've been living with for these last 5 years, raised her from age 2 months.

She's the closest thing to a child that I have.

I'm grappling with intense uncertainty as to if she's going to be ok.

Is it just an infection or worse? The vet was super unhelpful so now I'm thrust into further anxiety.

How do we hold onto peace in the midst of uncertainty?

Isaiah 26: He will keep in perfect peace those who's hearts are steadfastly upon Him (paraphrased)

Isaiah 60: I will make peace your governor

I will make peace your governor.

What a beautiful phrase. That God's promise is that we will be GOVERNED by peace. Not anxiety, not worry, not fear.

I don't want to be a fearful mother. To a dog or to a human child.

I'm realizing I've been governed by anxiety and fear my whole life. From the day I was born, I was thrust into anxiety.

I live each day with an underlying stream of anxiety, of subconsciously waiting for the bottom to drop out from below. With this lie that if something good happens, it must be balanced and tempered by something bad or a trial of some kind.

Is it possible that I will get pregnant this year but somehow lose Nuru? How is it that I deserve to be so happy that I can have a child, keep my dog, have an amazing marriage, a fulfilling job, healthy parents and a new house?

Do I believe God to be this good?

And yet God's reminder to me in this season is:

Peace will be your governor

I speak peace Jesus says. I can hold all things together. I am not a God who works in balances. I don't balance things out with good and not so good. I know only one mode: to always be good.

God, I want peace in the midst of this uncertain season and most especially, I want to be healed of the daily, persistent and chronic anxiety I live with each and every hour of every day.

I want to trust you completely.

I am scared. Every day I'm scared. I'm scared Nuru will die prematurely. I'm scared I'll have a sick child. I'm scared I'll have a complicated pregnancy. I'm scared my parents won't live long enough to see a grandchild. I'm scared I won't be a good mother.

I'm so scared.

Teach me O God to be steadfast in you. To cling to the rock that is higher than me. To allow peace to govern me.

N., I pray most fervently that you will not inherit this generational anxiety I carry. That somehow as you are knit together within me that my anxiety isn't exacerbated, but actually healed. That as you are knit together within me, a new frame of being and perspective is knit within me simultaneously, one that is immune to chronic anxiety, one that is no longer interlaced with chronic fear. I pray that as you are knit within me that I am knit together in Jesus in a new way that causes me to know courage, to know trust and to know hope and no longer fear and worry. May we both be knit together in hope, where anxiety can never thrive, can never live, where:

peace is our governor.