She had it under control. That is not the right phrase and she knows it, but it is the one people use, so: she had it where she could live with it.
Years of work had gone into that. She had a way of noticing it early. She had a walk she took. She had learned the difference between a thought and a fact, which took her about four years and is genuinely the most useful thing anybody ever taught her.
Then in January she did the thing.
The thing she had known about for a long while and had been going around. She did it, and it was hard, and it was right, and she has never once doubted that part.
By March it was back, and it was worse than it had been in six years.
Not the same shape either. It arrives now in the early morning rather than the evening, which is new and which she hates, because the morning used to be the safe part of the day and now she wakes into it at about half past four with her heart going.
She has done everything she knows. The walk, the noticing, the breathing, the things that work. They still work a bit. They do not work the way they used to.
And here is what has crept in underneath, and it is the reason she has not told anyone, because saying it out loud would make her sound like someone she does not want to be.
She has started reading it as a message.
Something along the lines of: if this is what obeying gets me, then either I got it wrong, or God is not particularly interested in what it cost me, or there is something in me that He is not pleased with and this is how she is finding out.
None of those are things she believes. She could preach against all three. She believes them at half past four in the morning, which is the hour when a person believes whatever is loudest.
And you have been reading your own inner weather as a message too. Something got harder after you obeyed, and some part of you has been quietly treating it as information about where you stand.
He spoke to his own soul, and the circumstances did not change
There is a psalm written by somebody who is having exactly this experience, and the remarkable thing about it is what he does not do.
He does not fix it. He does not report that it lifted. The psalm ends with the same downcast soul it started with, and it is in Scripture in that condition, which is a mercy nobody talks about enough.
What he does is turn and speak to himself.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.Psalm 42:5
Read what he is doing. He is not describing his soul. He is addressing it. He turns around inside himself and asks it a question and then tells it what to do, and the state it is in does not get a vote in that conversation.
You are permitted to speak to your own soul rather than be governed by it, and that is not denial, it is the exact thing a psalmist is doing in the middle of the worst of it. It is written, why are you cast down, O my soul, hope in God (Psalm 42:5), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an address like that a real act rather than a slogan, at half past four in the morning with a heart going.
Now the message reading, and it needs pulling apart carefully because it is doing real damage.
The return of a symptom is not a communication. Anxiety has causes, and the ones we understand are ordinary: sleep, load, hormones, a nervous system that has been asked to do something enormous and is running hot afterward. Doing a hard right thing in January is precisely the kind of load that shows up in a body in March, and that is a description of how a person is built rather than a verdict on how a person stands.
You are not being told anything by your own dread, and it has no authority to report on your standing before God, because it has no access to it. Scripture says there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a symptom who bears witness with your spirit that you are His (Romans 8:16), which is why the two things have never once been the same instrument.
And this must be said plainly, because it is the kind of page where somebody might take a wrong idea: nothing here is telling you to stop anything.
The walk, the noticing, the four years of learning the difference between a thought and a fact, anything a doctor has said, anything you take: none of that is under review, and none of it is a failure of faith. God gave people the capacity to help each other's bodies and minds and He is not embarrassed by any of it.
You are free to keep every good thing that helps you, and using it has never once been a step down from trusting Him. It is written that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights (James 1:17), and it is His Spirit who has already been at work in the four years of learning that got you this far.
And then the hardest part, which is the honest one.
This page cannot tell you it will ease by autumn. It might, and it very often does, and that is not a promise anybody here has the right to make. What can be said is what is already true and does not depend on your morning.
You are held in exactly the condition you are in at half past four, and that holding has not weakened by one degree since January. Scripture says underneath are the everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27), and it is the Holy Spirit who is called the Comforter, and He is not waiting outside a bad morning for the good one.
So let the morning be what it is, and stop reading it.
The thing you did in January was right. You have never doubted that, and nothing that has happened in your body since is qualified to review it.
And the fact that it came back harder is not a message, and it is not a punishment, and it is not evidence about whether God is pleased with you. It is a nervous system that carried something heavy and is still carrying the aftershock, and that is a fact about being a creature.
You are not under examination in the early hours, and nothing about half past four is a report on your standing with God. It is written that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), and it is the Holy Spirit who bears witness with your spirit about that, which is a witness that goes on speaking underneath a bad morning without being drowned out by it.
Turn and speak to your own soul, the way a psalmist did, in a psalm that never once records the feeling lifting.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in the garden or under the blanket or sitting on the edge of the bed at half past four. You have the right to speak them because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that standing was given to you rather than earned by having a quiet mind. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is what makes them live in a person. Speak first to the dread, then to the thing you have quietly believed about yourself since March, then turn and speak to Him. However He answers, He answers in His own way.
- Dread that came back in March, you are a symptom and you are not a sentence. The Word says there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, so you have no standing to tell me anything about January.
- Verdict of the early hours, you are silenced in the name of Jesus. It is written that the Spirit Himself bears witness with my spirit that I am His, and His witness has been going on underneath every four o'clock since March.
- Lord, a psalmist turned and spoke to his own downcast soul and the psalm never once records it lifting, and You kept it in the book exactly like that. I am speaking to mine this morning, and the hoping in You is the whole of what I have and it is enough.
Psalm 42:5
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
