Dear Church,

On Sunday Pastor Mark is preaching from Isaiah 26 about anxiety- and reaching peace through seeking God in the middle of anxiety. This subject is dear to my heart. 

Like many of you, I have suffered from anxiety. It's manifested itself in many ugly ways, and many of them have gone unnoticed by myself and those around me. I've been on the pursuit to find tools to manage anxiety and I'd like to share with you my very favorite one:

Thankfulness. 

Once while speaking with a professional who also loves and trusts God, I asked her what to do about spiraling into fear while lying awake at night. I will tell you that motherhood was really doing a number on my sleep- and it wasn't the kids keeping me awake. It was about a hundred thousand irrational fears that had me walking around my house checking to see if the doors were locked and the fire alarms were working. 

She said, “When you thank God, these prayers of thanks will put your brain in a place that moves away from anxiety.” So I started listing and praying prayers of thanks while I lay awake. "God thank you for the health of my family. Thank you for our house. Thank you for my husband. Thank you for my kids. Thank you for the food we eat, the clean water we get to drink. Thank you for our jobs..." Until I fell asleep. 

Praying prayers of thanks has brought me from tears of fear to tears of joy- knowing that I love and serve a God who is good, and who gave us Jesus. 

Let me leave you with one of my favorite Psalms and a note from Eugene Peterson, who wrote the Message version that this Psalm comes from:

Psalm 150- the last one. 

"1-6 Hallelujah!

Praise God in his holy house of worship,
    praise him under the open skies;
Praise him for his acts of power,
    praise him for his magnificent greatness;
Praise with a blast on the trumpet,
    praise by strumming soft strings;
Praise him with castanets and dance,
    praise him with banjo and flute;
Praise him with cymbals and a big bass drum,
    praise him with fiddles and mandolin.
Let every living, breathing creature praise God!

    Hallelujah!"

Eugene writes,

"The end of prayer is praise. The Psalms show praise as the end of prayer in both meanings of the word terminus, the last word in the final Psalm, and the goal at which all the psalm-prayers arrive after their long travels through the hinterlands of pain, doubt, and trouble, with only occasional vistas of the sunlit lands, along the way. 

All prayer, pursued far enough, becomes praise. Any prayer, no matter how angry and fearful the experiences it traverses, ends up in praise. It doesn't always get there quickly or easily- it may take a lifetime of uphill climbing- but it gets there. Eventually it gets there."

See you 10:30am Sunday in-person or online,

Chelsea Maitland

P.s. Stick around for our big Lemonfest on the Lawn event after the service Sunday!