What the Lord Showed Me about Joy in the Storm

I have generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). I take Celexa for it because GAD is a brain chemistry issue for me, and this SSRI works very well.

Unfortunately, my provider didn’t automatically refill the prescription because he wanted to see me first for a follow-up. Which I don’t mind, except that I badly need a bridge refill and am currently sitting here going through withdrawal while waiting for them to answer my message.

SUPER not fun.

And even if I only go a few more days with the medication fully out of my system, it may take another four to six weeks after restarting it before I feel like myself again. Or rather, like myself as I would be without GAD.

So today I’m irritable, confused, weepy, anxious, and trying not to bite everyone’s head off. As Mel Brooks famously called it: “High Anxiety.”

Yet while I was sitting here feeling terrible this morning, I noticed something else underneath it.

One of the great adventures of walking closely with the Holy Spirit is that over time the Christian life gets deeper and more intimate with God. You might start seeing things… NOT in a bad way! Because the Lord communicates in words and nudgings, and also in pictures. You can see that all over the Bible.

And while I was feeling absolutely awful, I became aware of what I can only describe as a bright foundational flow of glowing gold underneath everything else I was experiencing.

Nothing is wrong with me; God simply created me as a highly visual and conceptual thinker, and this is often how He communicates with me. He didn’t exactly “make” me feel happy in spite of the withdrawal.

He showed me something to feel deeply happy about even while I feel otherwise awful: the beautiful personification of the joy of the Lord in my life… the awareness that the Lord is there, that He loves me, and that His wisdom and power remain underneath the irritable feelings currently galloping around my nervous system.

Years ago in my 50s, I first perceived His joy as a crystal-clear fountain bubbling upward. Today it was a river of molten gold flowing beneath everything else.

The Lord will give us a deeper awareness that the Kingdom of God is actually real and present and alive underneath this ordinary world we move through every day.

“The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Glory to God in the highest!