On Worrying and Setting Right Priorities

Psalm 37:3-7 (CSB)

3 Trust in the Lord and do what is good;
dwell in the land and live securely.
4 Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you your heart’s desires.

5 Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act,
6 making your righteousness shine like the dawn,
your justice like the noonday.

7 Be silent before the Lord and wait expectantly for him;
do not be agitated by one who prospers in his way,
by the person who carries out evil plans.

Luke 10:38-42 (ESV)

38 Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. 39 And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. 40 But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, 42 but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

So far this year it seems like I’ve had more conversations than normal on the issue of setting priorities. Or at least that’s where we end up. We often start out thinking through anxiety, overwhelm, and a compulsion to control. Women are worrying. About a lot of things. An aging mom‘s dependence on pain pills. A brilliant daughter whose grades have plummeted. A husband won’t listen no matter how carefully his wife chooses her words. What kind of world will be left for our children to inherit. These are real conversations. Real burdens.

It’s these burdens that prompt a deep dive in the counseling room into what it looks like to honor God when you suspect you can’t do it all but feel like you have to try. The women I’m working with are seeking to grow in discernment and grow in wisdom. We are asking hard questions. What part of this is mine to do? What part is someone else’s? And what do I do if they don’t?

I’m reading Alan Noble’s new book, To Live Well, and this sentence from the introduction stopped me:

”Look beneath the usual culture war hot topics, look beneath the appearances of justice to see what Christ is calling us to, what our right obligations are, and how we can practice those in the world that demands everything of us all time.”

Obligations? Yes. But right obligations. A yoke that fits us. The yoke where Jesus is carrying the heavy side. Setting priorities correctly means learning to discern when to trust and how to obey. It takes knowing when the “to do” is wait and pray.

God help us, in and out of the counseling space, to turn away from demands to do, have, and be everything so that we can learn the “one thing needed,” in all the areas of our life.

On Pollen and Humility. Or, How I Learned the Truth of 1 Peter 5:3-8 the Hard Way

All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because,

God resists the proud
but gives grace to the humble.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your cares on him, because he cares about you.

1 Peter 5:3-8 CSB

It has been almost twenty-five years since I lived in seminary housing at Southeastern (SEBTS) in Wake Forest, North Carolina. I was not the student in those days, but I was learning a lot. It must have been this time of the year because I remember walking to the playground with my blonde pig-tailed two-year-old and being baffled that the metal slide was covered in yellow dust. “Is there a sulfur plant near here?” Ahhhh… the introduction of pollen to a native Texan who grew up wondering what all those allergy med commercials on TV were for. “Northerners who aren’t as tough as we are, I suppose.” Ahem. The ignorance of youth.

I wish my ignorance and arrogance were limited to my lack of understanding of spring allergens. (And sulfur plants undoubtedly.) But, of course, they weren’t. I was in the midst of a long season of confusing suffering. One source of my confusion was centered in my definition of abuse. I’ve shared some of those thoughts here. But a foundational belief that made my suffering more acute was a misunderstanding of the way God works in the world. I had thought that if I was a “good girl,” things would go well for me. I thought that’s how God treated people. I was not unexposed to suffering as a child, but it was really easy for me to interpret people’s suffering through the lens of what I perceived as their failure. I aimed to do better and assumed I would receive better. I was both ignorant and arrogant.

In, Suffering and Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and How God Restores, Diane Langberg describes it this way:

Our egocentricity says to us, “You have experienced these things because you have “_____,”—not been responsible, not loved your spouse well, not made moral choices, etc. Implicit is the idea that if they did what we did, made similar choices to ours, or behaved well, then injustice would not be present in their lives. If someone is downtrodden or oppressed, it is probably their fault.” (p. 17)

But there I was, experiencing “these things” even though I’d checked the right boxes.

Something to note in this passage that I am certain I could not see clearly at the time is that while God humbles his children, He does not humiliate them. His response to our humility is lifting us up, showing us favor, and caring for us. This informs how we can care for friends, family members, and counselees who are brought low by their suffering: seek to understand their situation from a place of humility, gently encourage them to seek God’s perspective of their situation, remind them that God cares for them, and point them towards the hope that as they trust and obey, God has promised to lift them up, “at the proper time.”

As a young believer, I was quick to assign blame when I encountered certain types of suffering. I did that with myself, and I did it with others. Sorrow did not soften my stance on sin, but it did humble me and help me be slower to make assumptions until I know someone’s story more deeply and understand the context of their lives well enough to discern what biblical commands speak into their situation. It is one of the many places we can see God’s wisdom given to us in his instruction, “Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another.” For my part, the pollen on my windshield in spring always reminds me to dress myself with that humility.

3 Reasons Why I Appreciate Esther’s Smith’s, “A Still and Quiet Mind: 12 Strategies for Changing Unwanted Thoughts”

Biblical counselor Esther Smith’s 2022 book, “A Still and Quiet Mind: 12 Strategies for Changing Unwanted Thoughts,” has been my top recommended resource to counselees since it came out. Here are three reasons why.

1. When we are having a helping conversation, I don’t think shared experience is a prerequisite. 2 Corinthians 1:3-7 is instructive to me on this point, with its hugely meaningful description of our God, “who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble.” That said, it is also true that God often chooses to redeem our suffering by using the lessons he has taught us in it to bless a fellow sister or brother in Christ. Such is the case with Esther Smith as she manages the somewhat difficult balancing act of writing from her own experience without focusing on herself.

2. One of this book's strengths is that it acknowledges its limitations. It can’t be a comprehensive do-it-yourself manual for everyone struggling with anxiety, intrusive thoughts, or post-traumatic stress. What it can do, and does well, is say, “Here are 12 things to try if what you are doing isn’t working.” My counselees have found different chapters helpful but have all been meaningfully helped by multiple strategies offered.

3. In the counseling room, I often see that one of my primary tasks is helping reduce the distance between what a woman believes is biblical and what she feels is practical. Biblical and practical, properly understood, are the same thing. We’ve been given everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). Smith’s emphasis throughout the book on change occurring within the context of a relationship with Christ closes that perceived gap for people in very meaningful ways.

As followers of Christ, we know that we are to seek the transformation of our minds. For those who struggle with unwanted thoughts, A Still and Quiet Mind points to helpful ways to do just that in the context of our relationship with Jesus. I’ll end with a favorite quote, “Telling ourselves to think something different is inadequate. Encountering God and experiencing who he is in our lives has the power to change everything.”