Casey | Grief + Anxiety

I've been married for eleven years to my husband Ben and we have six kids- our kids are 9, 8, 6, 5, 4 and 3. If that doesn't show you how crazy we are, we also homeschool and we drive a 15-passenger van… so we are just living the dream!

All of the things though that I just listed are just basic facts - things that you would know me from following me on Facebook or Instagram, my “highlight reel.” It'll show you a mom that just loves her kids and who is fairly put together. 

What you don't see is how I work through my grief and how often I work through my grief. You won't see the days that I can't get out of bed, when depression sets in. You can't hear my inner dialogue wondering if people are judging me or a million other anxious thoughts.

I could stand here and I could give you a rundown of all the things in my past that have brought me to where I am today but my biggest pain happened in 2018. At the age of 34, my brother Caleb went to sleep one night and never woke up. I spoke with him the night before he passed away and I still have that text message on my phone. We were joking with each other about getting old.

Less than three months after my brother's passing, we lost another amazing man - my PawPaw. In so many ways he was the glue that held our family together and losing him with a hard blow. 2019 brought a whole new set of challenges and we all know what 2020 was like… 

I felt like at that point I was just inside of a tornado. The things around me were moving at lightning speed and not allowing me to catch up. I was in the eye of the tornado, trying to get through each day as best I could… But God was there through every disappointment, every hurt, every moment of isolation, every wave of grief. 

He wasn't banging on the front door demanding that I let him in. He was waiting patiently and lovingly. He showed up for me in my kids and my husband, my friends, and most of all when I would sing.

Music for me is a way that God and I spend time together and it's the way that God uses to speak to me. Singing here on stage the words remind me that, in my moments of intense grief and pain, I know that I'm only experiencing a sliver of what Jesus felt on the cross. 

While on one hand that can help me to kind of set my perspective on my problems, on the other hand it lets me know that I'm not alone. Jesus felt every human emotion in his time on Earth. 

I'm not alone in the eye of the tornado. My God has shown me over the past few years that we all carry things with us, daily. Most of them are invisible. Carrying these things inside of ourselves creates an open door for Satan. He will show up in your thought life first, telling you that things never get better, something bad is going to happen, and they're judging you so close yourself off. 

But I can tell you because I've learned that God shows up biggest for us in our struggle and in our pain. Finding hope in my life took a lot of time finding who God is and who I am in Him. 

Can you imagine Satan would be stopped from if we weren't hiding the tough stuff that we go through, if we never act like everything is okay when it’s not? God’s waiting for you - he's waiting patiently and lovingly. He's waiting to show you what it looks like on the other side of your grief and your pain.

He’s waiting for you to see that he paid with his life to bring you closer to him.