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If you’re expecting a baby and you find that worries keep creeping into your mind, you’re not alone.
Most women feel worried during pregnancy at some point: Anxiety disorders during pregnancy and in the postpartum period are common, and may affect up to one in five women.
All new and unfamiliar experiences bring a certain amount of anxiety, and pregnancy is a time full of big changes… while anticipating lots more unfamiliar experiences!
This helpful article has a list of ways to deal with anxiety during pregnancy, including journaling, getting adequate sleep, and otherwise relieving stress while pursuing relaxation.
For many women, praying and seeking God’s peace can help a lot with their pregnancy anxiety. If this anxiety sounds familiar, you might find great consolation in reading Psalm 139.
This Scripture passage is a reminder of God’s tender love for each one of us. Reading it might be a chance to practice Lectio Divina, or you may want to pray it throughout your pregnancy (and don’t miss this reflection on it):
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the winds of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,’
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them – they are more than the sand;
I come to the end – I am still with you.(Psalm 139:1-18)
God is always with us, and nothing on earth can separate us from His love. What would it look like to lean totally on God and let him take our burdens?
But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39)
What would it feel like if God’s peace became our strength in times of worry and fear?
“The strength will be given you, as much as you need, and as often as you ask, and as soon as you ask, and generally long before you ask for it, too.”
And today we celebrate...