It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly 10 months since I posted to BentonBlog. It was a post in January to let you know that I was letting go of my goal to post every day for the Hampton Roads Church ResilieNT Reading plan and would instead focus on editing and posting the blog articles that church members would submit. If you haven’t taken a look, we now have almost the whole New Testament covered with chapter-by-chapter devotionals over the past 10 plus months (see Hampton Roads Church ResiieNT plan and blog posts).
2021 has been a challenging year for me, and I’m sure for many of you. In 2020, I embraced the challenges of the pandemic, stepped up my writing for the blog, and got into a regular rhythm during the quarantines, social distancing and mask wearing. As the pandemic continued into 2021, I found myself a bit overwhelmed with all of the things I wanted to do. One of those things was the blog. I was finding writing difficult, so I paused my blog post writing and focused on helping the church’s blog post schedule. However, even letting go of a few tasks and trying to simplify wasn’t enough.
New Year, New Challenges
After the decision to let go of posting to BentonBlog daily, I found myself facing new challenges. I began to have trouble concentrating and started to have difficultly sleeping. I found myself waking in the night with my mind racing, and doubting myself in terms of being able to write, participate in my morning haverim group and then also in getting my work done for my job. Though in the past I’ve gone through short periods of time feeling anxiety, and through prayer and rest I’ve generally recovered and moved on, this felt different. I found myself losing hope that I could overcome the anxiety. I also found myself feeling guilt and shame about some aspects of my life, including my walk with God and my productivity on my job.
With encouragement from my wife, the brothers in my haverim group and others, I took some time to share my feelings and confess some sin that was weighing me down. I also sought out medical help to deal with the lack of sleep and anxiety. It helped to have a few close relationships that I knew I could count on for encouragement and to just be real about how I was feeling. I began to see improvement in my sleep and ability to focus, and by mid-April I was back to feeling better and was able to be productive at work. Also around that time, Mary and I were able to get our COVID vaccinations and follow through on plans to visit our children and grandchildren in June. We spent most of June (three weeks) in Washington State and had a wonderful restful time.
Since summer, I’ve had great discussions with others about how the pandemic, social unrest, politics and unity issues have affected them since the beginning of the pandemic. I’ve seen that I was not alone – many have had struggles with anxiety in addition to other challenges like job loss, sickness, loss of loved ones. It’s become more and more clear that the only answer is Jesus. While we often can feel anxiety and sadness in these challenging times, Jesus is what we need to overcome and persevere.
New Start, New Blog Series
Recently I was asked to preach a lesson for the Greater Chesapeake region Sunday service. I chose to look at the seven “I am” statements of Jesus since we were currently in the middle of the book of John on the ResilieNT reading plan. Preparing the lesson helped me put some things into perspective and to reaffirm that Jesus meets all of our needs. I decided that the lesson would be a great way to re-start my writing for BentonBlog. I’m currently drafting a blog post series that should start posting soon.
As I learned to better manage my anxiety, I found that it helped for me to get back to the the basic spiritual disciplines, like prayer, Bible study and fasting. I took some time in September to focus on praying and then taking time in silence to seek peace and listen for God’s voice. I plan to continue growing in these disciplines, and to write a blog post series based on what I’m learning.
Thank you to all who helped me through this difficult year with prayers and encouragement, even if I didn’t know about it. God has heard your prayers for me and He is lifting me up. Please keep reading as I post the new series, and let me know your thoughts as we end 2021 and move into a new year with new hope for new joy in 2022.
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
1 Peter 5:6-7