Isn’t it strange how you can be going along in life, just plugging away at all your regular things you do, like sweeping cheerios and dried peanut butter toast up off the floor, and loving your kids and trying to stay connected to your spouse, all the while this anxious stuff is quietly piling up there inside your chest?

At first you’re blissfully unaware. Because you’re busy and so you think you’re doing just fine. Meanwhile, you skim headlines on the news and your friend writes to tell you her world is falling apart, and a few friends ask you to do them a favor, and the kids keep making messes and you can’t find that one bill, and you’re laying there in bed at night, tired as can be, but for the life of you, you just can’t fall asleep.

And this happens more frequently until one night the wind is blowing so ferociously outside your window, that you’re just flat out scared that a tornado is comin’ and you don’t know if you’ll have time to save your babes. It’s then that you realize there’s this whole heaping amount of anxiety that’s been going on.

So, when you’re sipping coffee the next morning, reading the story of Noah and the flood to your children, it dawns on you—how much you need a God who keeps His promises.

Because your heart, it’s not all that stable, really. Your emotions are finicky and they flux with every article you read and every email you get and whether or not the sky is full of light or mostly just dull and grey.

Maybe you’re not as much like me as I would like to think.

But, perhaps you feel it, too. And you’d really like to know there’s a God who doesn’t change.

This mornin’ as I sat at the kitchen table and attempted to nourish the hearts of my kids, God was faithful to speak life into my own fragile, anxious places.

Here’s a promise from Him that I can always count on—He’ll never leave me or forsake me.

“Maggie,” my Maker seemed to say, “I’m not gonna leave you alone here. Not when you’re at the sink or over the laundry. I’m with you when you’re holding your kids and carrying burdens for your friends. I’m near, close at hand when you’re in the yard, diggin’ in the dirt, and when you’re awake in the night, wondering if you’ll get much sleep. I’m doing a whole myriad of things you don’t know about and can’t quite see just yet. So, rest, okay?  I’m wasting nothing. Let that be enough.”

I quote the promise to my kids and Hopey asks what it means when God says that He won’t forsake us.

I hold out my arms like a big embrace and tell her that God is always being towards us like this. We can run to Him no matter what. He’s not gonna turn His face and cross His arms over His chest and push us away.

So, we draw rainbows and color this promise and swallow down some hope for a new day.

Don’t be obsessed with getting more material things. Be relaxed with what you have. Since God assured us, “I’ll never let you down, never walk off and leave you,” we can boldly quote,