Safe
“I am overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to death…
You have overwhelmed me with all your waves…
You rule over the surging sea;
when its waves mount up, you still them.”
-Psalm 88:3, 7; 89:9
“The name of the Lord is a strong tower;
the righteous run to it and are safe.”
-Proverbs 18:8
Are you feeling overwhelmed by the trials and tests of life lately? As Christians, we give mental assent to John 16:33, when Jesus tells us “these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” That doesn’t make it easier, when overwhelmed, to overcome.
How do we cross over from being overwhelmed to being overcomers? To be overwhelmed is to be overcome by something. The adjectives Google provides are daunting enough: engulf, submerge, or bury; flow, heap up abundantly, as in “The brook whelmed up from its source.” If my source is in Jesus, I should be whelming up with peace and joy. Merriam-Webster takes the definition with an even more assertive angle: “To turn upside down usually to cover something: cover or engulf completely with usually disastrous effect.” That is the fruit of misplaced affections, the opposite of feeling safe. I wreak further havoc on myself when I fixate on my worries and trials. The question begs repeating: how do we overcome when overwhelmed? Revelation 12:11 answers this question: “By the blood of the Lamb and the Word of [your] testimony.”
I have a friend who has been walking through a hard season right now, and I had been sharing how I had so much admiration for her positive attitude. Her response impacted me: Without the tests in life, we wouldn’t have a testimony. Deuteronomy 8:2 supports this mentality, when the author reminds the Israelites to “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness…to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart.” We are to “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever” and live out our redemption by the word of our testimony through our trials: “Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story—those he redeemed from the hand of the foe, those he gathered…” (Psalm 107:1-3).
So, as my emotions flail up and crash down in the storms of life, I need to be mindful of what I’m holding onto. Am I holding fast to the approval of another person (fear of man), or am I anchoring my trust in God’s long-suffering acceptance of me? Am I relying on the external encouragement of others, or am I steadfastly fixed on God’s unfailing support? In The Body Revelation, Alysa Keeton expounds on the connection between negative emotions and negative energy.
“Think about some of the negative things that have happened to you: bullying, teasing, shaming, or lies spoken over you in a moment of unrestrained rage or overwhelming fear. Now stop and think about how the negative energy that was spewed on you had been carried inside someone who was passing on the pain dumped onto them. Before they hurt you, someone had hurt them, and before that, someone had hurt that person too. All that painful emotional energy flows on and on”
-The Body Revelation by Alysa Keeton (p.39).
Keeton compares the medial prefrontal cortex in the brain to a high tower of safety, where one’s reasoning skills work clearly. She equates our fight, flight, and freeze neuron cluster to the amygdala, which is seated on top of the brain stem, the valley floor. What we want to do is climb the stairs to the window that towers high above the clouds of our valley circumstances. Then we will discover that not only will “The sun…arise, which will scatter the clouds,” but our line of vision can see above the fog. The bottom line is that Alysa Keeton calls me out on why I’m overwhelmed. “When we get tripped up by the tests in life, we are too attached to the pain” to run to the the strong tower. “Just as testing in school demonstrates that we have what it takes to advance to a higher grade, so God’s times of testing prove we know God and through faith in Him we have power to destroy the plans of the enemy” (Keeton, p.164).
Who has my affection? Is it God, or is it the “thing” that I’m obsessing and worrying over? The reason I am so over-whelmed is because my affections are misplaced: I want to pick the thing up, turn it over in my hands and dissect it, hold it up in the light and justify my own belief system about how I’m feeling about the thing. In this perspective, I am not positioned to receive His peace, because I’m allowing myself to feel engulfed by the thing instead of running to His strong tower. I need to set the thing down, think of something—anything—concerning that situation about which to be thankful, and run to the tower and up the stairs so I can look out the window above the clouds; I need to allow my prefrontal cortex that time to clear up the cloudy perspectives.
In the testing, let Him form in you a grateful praise that will take you to the high tower, where you will be “seated above, enthroned in the Father’s love.” The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into and are safe. May you feel perfectly surrounded, seated above in His safe tower, and allow Him to metabolize any painful emotions in a healthy way.
“When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then You knew my path.”
-Psalm 142:3
“In the night of distress, feel after somewhat
which may quiet and stay thy heart ‘til the next springing of the day.
The sun will arise, which will scatter the clouds.
And in the day of His power thou wilt find strength to walk with Him;
yea, in the day of thy weakness His grace will be sufficient for thee.”-Isaac Penington
About the Author
Deborah Ann Custer is a homeschool mom who cultivates life in the southwest corner of Wisconsin. Deborah Ann is living her dream with her family by keeping up with laundry, dishes, giving piano and voice lessons, accompanying choirs, and pitching in with local theater productions. She loves cross country skiing through snow dusted trails, sunlight filtering in through her window during the quiet, early morning hours, and camping with her family. She and her husband have been leading worship at their church for over twenty years.