I heard this book recommended on the Counsel Culture podcast and ordered it online sight unseen, after hearing Nikki speak about her experience of anxiety.
It was somewhat of a surprise when the book arrived and discovered that I knew several of the people who had endorsed it. Then, on starting to read it, I realised I knew who she was from many years ago, and part of the story she shared was one I was personally very familiar with.
Nikki has written a moving and poignant story of her struggle with anxiety over the last 20+ years, which developed after the accidental death of her older brother when she was 19.
This is not a theological exposition of anxiety, nor it is a treatment manual. Rather, this is a personal story that graciously invites the reader into her life and experience. We are allowed to see her journey in all its ups and downs, and in so doing, to witness her pain, challenges, and joys over the years. Her honesty is raw and open, as she shares her struggles through different seasons of grief, relationships, and fertility issues, and how anxiety continued to rear its head in various ways. Each time her own faith was stretched and matured.
The early part of the book is anchored around her brother Greg. It starts with early stories of their family and gives the background of a loving, stable home, with an older brother that Nikki adored and who had already matured beyond his years in his own faith. Their upper teenage years were the same as my own* - part of a robust, loving youth and young adults group that were on fire for Jesus in the 1990s. A time of coming to faith, of being challenged to wonder what it meant to live for Jesus, and a time of being surrounded with other young friends who were all asking the same questions. Many from those years have gone on to serve Christ in wonderfully various ways around the world. But as Nikki notes, they were the early days of heady faith, still absolutely real and true, yet not really tested by the trials of life to come:
“I do not mean to say my faith then was not real. I believe with all my heart that it was. But it was also just the beginning. In the beginning my faith was a pure, secure space. Genuine, but tender. Grounded, but on untrodden ground. True, but untested. Encircling, but also enclosed. In the beginning my faith was safe. But, in many ways I didn't realise yet, it was also very, very small.” (p. 21)Her retelling of the times prior to and after the accident were personally very moving to read and quickly recalled my own recollections of those years. For any reader, this will be a powerfully sad and moving story, I just found it additionally so because of the personal connection.
Nikki is honest about how anxiety started in those early months of grief, and how it impacted her.
“The truth was, anxiety didn't sit outside my relationship with God, as I suppose I expected or wanted it to. It came in there too. Anxiety … made me second-guess everything, until even my own faith felt uneasy… Was God the father in the Prodigal story, with his arms out stretched waiting to welcome me home again from the long distance I've travelled, or a disappointed parent, wagging his finger at me while I hung my head in shame? If I knew he was the first, I often felt he was the second." (p. 153)Anxiety remained a recurring element over the years, and one she has learnt to manage through medication, good counselling and mental health care, as well as strong family and friend support, and a faith that God is with her through it all.
“The fact that anxiety is in the Bible is proof that it exists. Further, it is proof that God understands. (p. xviii)
“This isn’t a story about overcoming. But it is one about coming closer and drawing near. It is a story of becoming aware of a widened, expanded faith…This, then, is a book for anyone who shares a similar but particularly strong should voice in their ear; for anyone who thinks they ought to be better. (p. xix)This book is beautifully written. Nikki has a PhD in Literature, and it shows. Her phrasing is wonderful, the way she weaves words together adds to the richness of the whole story. So, while it is a sad story at points and I was moved to tears, it is also delightful to read and laden with creative expression. I really appreciated how she has gently woven the story of others into her own, most notably the support of her husband Mike, but also her parents, friends, and her health care professionals (e.g., the Wise Woman and the Wise Man).
This is highly recommended reading. As I said, it’s a story of anxiety, not a “how to manage it” guide. But those who live with anxiety and those who support them will likely find much here that helps them to sort through the platitudes that some have, and instead to help them rest in their Heavenly Father’s care, despite the challenges that he allows them to face:
“I like to think anxiety taught me to accept my humanity – to be humble and realistic in my humanness in this now-and-not-yet space – and to expand to see the Father’s embodied compassion and divinity, not as something I need to stretch to touch, but as always wrapped around me, coming down to meet me. Anxiety has opened my faith-eyes to see him more clearly.” (p.218)
*I was also a friend of Greg’s. Not on the “inner circle” as it were, but more part of the main group.
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