Even now, I have a hard time even saying the word out loud: anxiety. It felt like an exaggeration, a ploy that I was using to get other people to feel sorry for me—it felt like I was co-opting the term. Most of all, I feared that this one word exposed just how weak I really was, how terrible of a Christian I was, and how little faith I had in the Lord.

My senior year of college was marked by these worries. Even when I sat in front of a school counselor and she suggested that I might have generalized anxiety, I wanted to deny it. After all, while this was all going on, I was serving college students all around the country and planning a regional college conference for over 100 students. What kind of role model would I be if I had anxiety? How could I make decisions that would impact the spiritual lives of so many others? But after months of my hands trembling for no reason, toxic cyclical thoughts that convinced me that everyone was secretly sick of me, and even a coffee shop breakdown, it became clear that this wasn’t something I could ignore. 

I knew I had to bring it to the Lord.

That didn’t just mean praying more; it also meant acknowledging what I was going through and seeking help. I started attending counseling sessions, and in the hours leading up to those sessions, I would try to pray, but would end up self-flagellating myself for my weakness. This brother wouldn’t need to go to a counselor, I told myself. This sister is busier and more stressed, and she doesn’t have this problem. Am I just putting up an image for people? Most common of these prayers:

Lord, how could you let someone as terrible as me follow You?

In hindsight, I realize that those weren’t productive prayers, but attacks from Satan to put up barriers between me and the Lord. I’m thankful that I was able to bring those thoughts to the Lord in the first place. Even when I couldn’t pick up the Bible on my own, and when I prayed in meetings, every word felt religious and dead, I had my commitments. The Lord made it clear that I couldn’t just stop planning, praying, or going to meetings. I could only ask the Lord to cover the effects of everything I did and said on the saints around me.

During that time, the only thing that saved me was the Lord’s name. I would call on His name every time and every place—whisper it before I went to bed, sigh it on my way to class, pray it when I had no other words. 

Oh, Lord Jesus. Oh, Lord Jesus. 

I can’t describe how much the name of Jesus comforted me during those times.  During those tumultuous days, I saw that yes, I was indeed incapable of following the Lord on my own, but He supplied me with the strength to strive to follow and serve Him. I couldn’t trust myself, but I could trust Him. I learned how to touch the Lord apart from myself and to recognize that while my feelings were subjective, who the Lord is and what He has done is always objective and true. I experienced the reality of the verse, “and anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21, Romans 10:13).

Many times, I couldn’t even say the whole thing, just, Oh, Lord, or even just, Oh. Calling on the Lord’s name was the purest way to approach Him. When I called on His name, it didn’t matter how I was feeling or what Satan was trying to convince me of. Instead, I could rest on the very person of Jesus Christ and know that He was unchanging even as my emotions changed by the hour.

As for how I’m doing now, I’d say, “I’m okay.” There are still bad days, times when it’s hard to settle my thoughts or stop guessing at what other people think of me. I’ll probably always be prone to overthinking and more susceptible to stress than most others. But somehow, I have a deep sense within me that, “I’m okay.” The Lord isn’t done using my anxiety to teach me how to rely on Him more and reveal more of His depths, and if this is what He has chosen to use to make me turn to Him, may He give me the grace to say, “Amen.”

I’m certainly not the model of mental health and taking care of myself, so if you’re experiencing anything similar to my situation, I highly suggest talking to a mental health professional. However, I also suggest these three simple words: Oh, Lord Jesus. They’re not magic or some cure-all panacea. But His name is the name above all names, encapsulating the totality of our Savior and Friend and Shelter and every other aspect of who Jesus is to us. There’s a Person contained in that name, and calling on it brings us close to who He is. 

After all, “anyone who calls upon His name will be saved.”