This has been one of those marathon weeks for my family, and we’re halfway there!  The Christmas season brings with it many joys, but also many extra tasks and responsibilities.  Yesterday I had what can only be described as a migraine…at least, as far as I know.  I’ve never been diagnosed.  But I know it’s a tension headache because it begins at the base of my neck and spreads upwards until it engages my entire head and renders me useless for anything except lying still in a quiet, dark room.   Today it is a notch better, but I am wiped out.  Thus, a very short post today!

Before I got up this morning, I noticed that the muscles in my legs were clenched tightly.  My jaw was also clenched, and of course, my neck is tense as well.  All this without me being cognizant, all this in my sleep.  Why is it that I sometimes feel a low-level anxiety?  It has no name to it.  I can’t pinpoint why I feel on edge.  There are no thoughts running around in my head different than any other day.  Yet my head aches, my back is sore, my shoulders feel like they’re made of rocks.  So why am I anxious?  Sometimes I get anxious trying to figure out why I’m anxious!

And then I remember: it doesn’t matter.  The LORD knows me.  He doesn’t just know my name.  He made me.  He knows everything about me, and I mean everything.  There is nowhere I can go to hide from him.  There is no hide-and-seek with God, is there?  That must mean that he knows why I am anxious.  This morning he led me to Psalm 139:

 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.

24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

David wrote those words.  They follow his beautiful words to God about how the LORD knit him in his mother’s womb (I just love that part!).  David understood that the LORD truly knows us.  And that’s a very good thing when we don’t know ourselves.  It is comforting to me to know that even David — King David — had moments when he wanted God to search him and know his heart.  Why?  I’m guessing it’s because David was having a moment when he was anxious and didn’t know why.  Just like me.

There are many treasures to be unearthed in those words, digging into the Hebrew used for each.  But the one that stands out for me this morning is this one: sar’aph.  The NIV translates them as “anxious thoughts.”  The KJV just says “thoughts.”  But sar’aph can mean either thoughts, or disquieting thoughts.

Disquieting.  It literally means “to take away the peace and tranquility of.”

And strangely enough, I find peace when I rest in the thought that whatever it is that is trying to take away my peace and tranquility — God knows about it.  He knows about it and will show me and will continue to lead me in the way everlasting.  I don’t have to know.  I find peace in knowing that He knows, and that he fights my battles for me.

See there?  My headache is better already!