While reading in my Bible this morning, I noticed something interesting. In Psalm 30:11-12, the Psalmist says: “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing, you have loosed sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!” What stands out to me in this passage is the presence of mourning and sadness, not the absence.

For most of my life, I have felt like a “bad” Christian for any emotion other than happiness.  Yet, God created humans with emotions, and the people of the Bible are full of these emotions, as noted above. For years I’ve struggled with anxiety/OCD tendencies. I’ve been ashamed of this weakness, searched for a formula to handle it, and prayed for deliverance. Many of my friends deal with anxiety, and several battle some form of depression; lots of them are Christians. Sometimes these areas of struggle are a lack of trust in God, caring too much what people think, a sin, or any other number of causes, and we should prayerfully seek the Lord’s guidance as we wade through the reasoning. Oftentimes in my experience there’s also a physiological component (I’m not a psychologist, so this is a non-professional opinion), and the struggle just “is what it is.”

In 2 Corinthians, Paul was given a “thorn in the flesh,” for which he pleaded for God to remove. God’s answer was, “my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” As I get older I’m learning a reality in life around me: everyone has something they struggle with. A thorn, if you will. It may be a broken family, health issues, anxiety, depression, financial problem, grief, or any other number of issues. As we’ve studied Ecclesiastes, we see this idea even more: life is full of toil. That’s normal! It’s in this reality that we turn to Jesus and find joy in our lives: with our families and friends, homes and feasts, and other abundant gifts from God. We have an eternal hope that outlasts the here and now, and it colors the world around us in a different way. Pain doesn’t triumph; it’s short-lived in light of eternity. Does that mean we are “happy” all the time? Void of problems? No! It means we have a framework to understand the good and the bad, the roller coaster of life.

Anxiety is one of my weaknesses. Yet it is in this specific weakness that I have seen that God’s grace is sufficient for me. Do I hate anxiety? Yes. Do I wish I could eliminate it forever? For sure. However, I’ve learned to ask myself: where do these emotions make me turn? This struggle drives me to the feet of my Father. I can’t manage on my own. He is the one who holds me, comforts me, heals me. I’m oddly thankful for this struggle that pushes me to the cross, to the present reality of God’s grace. It’s almost like I get to relive the beauty of His grace and marvel at it all over again each time I reach out in desperation.

Managing struggles usually cannot be achieved by following a simple formula, it’s a combination of many things: a reliance on the truth of Scripture combined with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, support of community, health for the body, and the constant reminder of God’s grace. The beauty of this “formula” is that we can revel in God’s grace. These labels we place on ourselves can help us understand the symptoms of our struggles, but they are not our identity. They are components of our humanity, but they deteriorate and lose their power in light of our identity as children of God and followers of Christ.

There’s not anything we have to do or be to earn our salvation. That work is done! We can stop and find peace. Struggles are a part of life, but like the Psalmist says, we get to see God turn our pain into dancing and clothe us with gladness! That is an amazing hope, one in which we can give thanks to God.