All the way there

He shouldered a cross.

I shouldered my dread.

And walked.

Soft and tenuous, down the dark hall. I didn’t need the lights. My feet knew the worn path down cheap carpet.

She had slept eight hours. Eight. My gratitude, my full chest, my deep fear, wrestled for dominance in my mind. My pulse thudded and my breathing couldn’t quite flow. Panic warred.

I opened the door and sank onto the rumpled guest bed that I slept in more often than not. Soft sheets and prickly legs. I sat there, watching her squirming body slowly wake through the bars of the crib. Listening to her snuffling, my fear unraveled into brief relief and melted into stinging embarrassment. It then poured, pounding through my ears.

I sat there, drenched in its intensity. Why do I fear so much? Why do I fear the worst and struggle to get back to reality?

I knew. I knew being a mother would be hard work. That did not scare me at all. I knew it would be painful, but she was so worth it. I knew I would be more exhausted than I could have imagined. I knew.

But where had my mind gone? That’s what I didn’t expect. To discover that the person who looked out my eyes would suddenly be flung on an endless roller coaster of fear, relief, then shame at my weakness. All the while my “sane” self struggling to keep a rein on it all.

Some of you never struggled with this. And that’s a blessing. But many do. And many more did. Whatever your double scoop sundae of genetics, upbringing, fallenness, and personality is — the sauce all over it and the cherry on top is this: “I shouldn’t be like this.”

And that “shouldn’t” drenched me as the morning seeped through the windows and bloomed up the walls. As my healthy baby lifted her tussled head and turned to grin at me with blurry eyes. I lifted her soggy, babbling self up and took her to the change table, wondering what on earth was wrong with me. I could see she was fine. I was fine. Everything is fine. So why did I wake in panic every day?

This was the encouragement that I held onto when my kids were babies:

“But the Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame” (Isaiah 50:7).

Not exactly a popular embroidery subject to put on the wall, but it reminded me of two things.

My help is from God. To bear these children, to feed and raise and love them, He is my help. My strength, my defender, my comfort. He will be with me as I walk down that worn hallway in the wee hours of the morning.

Second, there is no shame in anxiety. There is no “shouldn’t be anxious,” only that I am, at times, anxious. It is not a disgrace, it is part of being human and some of us struggle with it more than others. Maybe the overachievers like me meet the complex and mostly-not-controllable thing that is motherhood and we spiral more often.

This verse is Jesus Himself speaking prophetically about His goal of the cross. He knew the horror and abandonment and suffering it would mean and still, He set His face like a flint and went anyway. For the joy (you) that was set before Him, he bore His cross and went all the way into the worst. And that’s why we can face our worst - because he’s already been there before us.

What is “all the way” for you? This is different for each mother, each moment, but maybe you’re afraid of illness or death or not taking care of their basic needs. Whatever it is, you don’t know it like Jesus knew — but you can trust Him with it. Whatever the fear is, tell the Lord, “I trust you with even that — all the way.”

For moms struggling with anxiety, that hallway is the valley of death. “But even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” Why? “For You are with me” (Psalm 23:4).

And you know what? Most of the time He takes you down that hallway and leads you right back out without ever living through what you fear. But trusting Him — even with the greatest fear — trains your mind and heart to not fear. Because over and over, He is faithful in the fear. He’s with you until your nervous system calms down and calibrates itself, and He’s still with you when the next challenge of motherhood comes.

So let’s take His hand and walk all the way there, and all the way back.