When the kids are gone and summer is flying fast and the morning chill portends to fall. When the news is bleak with buckled houses and panicked faces and fierce mobs shooting in the streets. When hopes fade and fears swell and what’s on the horizon seems like more than I can face, I can either give into the gloom, let it swallow me like an ocean, roll me into its dark depths.

Or I can kick back against the waves.

Cup my hands and keep swimming.

In times like these, “This is how we learn to trust and continue to trust and lean on Yeshua in prayer,” my mother once wrote to me, using the Hebrew name for Jesus, soft as a whispered plea.

Last week would have been her 72nd birthday. She’s been gone for seven years now. Or something like that. The numbers get muddled in my head. All I know is that I miss my mother the way I miss my grown children – one on the West Coast, one an hour’s drive north, another leaving this weekend to begin college in upstate New York.

Whirling in this troubled sea, I need an anchor for my anxious heart. A guarantee that someday we will all be gathered safe back together again. But my head is so full of worry, there’s little room for anything else. So on my computer I type, ‘Jesus, Scripture, Peace,’ and up pops page after page of ancient promises for a modern age.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid,” John 14:27.

“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you,” Isaiah 26:3.

“I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the Lord; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope,” Jeremiah 29:11.

I find these verses printed on the pages of Country Living, Parade and Women’s Day – magazines better known for gardening tips and gossip than for Bible study. But today, with sickness surging and the future uncertain, we are all searching for peace it seems. Perhaps there are no atheists in fox holes after all. Or maybe in our deepest souls, we each desire to know that when the summer is flying fast and the news is bleak and our fears swell, we are not alone.

“This is how we learn to trust and continue to trust and lean on Yeshua in prayer,” I read my mother’s words again.

Not by giving in to despair.

Not by pretending that the future isn’t tinted with trouble.

But by learning to lean on Jesus in prayer.

Peace.

Trust.

Kick back.

Whisper a plea.

Cup your hands and keep swimming.

Meadow Rue Merrill, author of the memoir “Redeeming Ruth,” writes from a little house in the big woods of Midcoast Maine. She is also the author of the children’s picture book “The Best Birthday” and four other books celebrating the holidays with activities that build children’s faith. Connect at meadowrue.com

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