Learning to Swim: Prayer, Anxiety and the Presence of God
‘The waters are rising, but so am I.’ These words from Catherine Booth have stayed with me over the past year in ways I never expected. Words: Captain Emma Howan
For much of my Christian life, I assumed faith and anxiety sat at opposite ends of a spectrum. Faith meant trust, confidence and peace. Anxiety meant fear, worry and uncertainty. If my faith was strong enough, surely anxiety would diminish.
Then in 2020, at age 29, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. After surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatment, I was told there was no evidence of disease. I celebrated. My family celebrated. We thanked God and moved forward with life.
Five years later, that story changed.
What began as some unusual symptoms became scans, tests and eventually words I never imagined hearing: the cancer had returned and spread to my bones, liver and lungs. This time it was stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. This time there would be no cure.
Suddenly I was living in a world filled with uncertainty. How long would treatment work? What would happen to my family? What would ministry look like? What would life look like a year from now?
Anxiety became an almost permanent companion.
As I began reading books and memoirs written by people living with advanced cancer, I noticed something interesting. Very few spoke about conquering anxiety. Most spoke about learning to live with it.
They described anxiety as something that rose and fell like the tide. It accompanied scan results, hospital appointments, new symptoms and difficult decisions. It wasn’t a problem to be solved once and for all. It was part of the landscape.
I found myself wondering whether Christians sometimes create expectations God never intended us to carry. What if faith does not always mean freedom from anxiety? What if faith can co-exist with fear?
Most importantly, what does prayer look like when anxiety refuses to leave?
When prayer doesn’t fix everything
I have prayed more during the past year than perhaps at any other time in my life.
I have prayed in oncology waiting rooms. I’ve prayed lying awake at 3am. I’ve prayed before scans and after phone calls from doctors. I’ve prayed through tears, confusion and exhaustion.
And if I’m honest, prayer has not removed my anxiety. At least, not in the way I expected.
There have been moments when God’s peace has felt tangible and overwhelming. But there have also been many moments when I finished praying and the anxiety was still there. For a while, I thought this meant I was doing prayer wrong.
Perhaps I wasn’t praying hard enough. Perhaps I lacked faith. Perhaps there was some spiritual secret I had missed. Over time, however, I began to realise that I was approaching prayer as a solution rather than a relationship.
I wanted prayer to eliminate uncertainty. God seemed more interested in accompanying me through it. Prayer became less about controlling outcomes and more about remaining connected to God in circumstances I could not control.
I stopped trying to bring God polished prayers and began bringing Him honest ones. Sometimes those prayers sounded remarkably unspiritual:
‘God, I’m scared.’
‘I don’t know what happens next.’
‘I don’t think I can do this.’
‘I need help.’
I discovered that prayer does not require courage before we come to God. Prayer is often the place where we bring our lack of courage.
The Psalms are full of this kind of honesty. They remind us that faith has always included lament, questions, tears and uncertainty. God does not seem threatened by our fear. Nor does He require us to hide it from Him.
God does not seem threatened by our fear. Nor does He require us to hide it from Him.
The gift of Catherine Booth
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When we tell Catherine’s story today, there can be a temptation to remember only her courage. We often celebrate her determination, her preaching and her influence on the early Salvation Army.
All of that is true. But Catherine was also profoundly human.
Her letters and recorded conversations reveal someone who grieved deeply. She worried about her husband William. She worried about her children. She worried about the future of the movement she had helped build. She knew what it meant to face uncertainty.
Yet what strikes me most is not the absence of anxiety in Catherine’s life. It is her refusal to let anxiety have the final word.
Again and again, she turned towards God.
Again and again, she continued praying.
Again and again, she continued serving.
Even when cancer eventually robbed her of the ability to write with her right hand, she learned to write with her left.
Even when cancer eventually robbed her of the ability to write with her right hand, she learned to write with her left. When she could no longer do that, she dictated letters and messages from her bed.
Her circumstances narrowed, but her faith continued to find expression.
The image that stays with me most is not Catherine triumphantly standing above suffering. It is Catherine remaining faithful in the middle of suffering. That feels far more relatable.
The waters are rising
One of Catherine’s most famous statements came near the end of her life:
‘The waters are rising, but so am I. I am not going under, but over.’
For years, I interpreted those words as a declaration of victory. Now I hear them differently. The phrase begins with an acknowledgement of reality. The waters are rising. Not might rise. Not could rise. Are rising.
Catherine did not deny the seriousness of her illness. She did not pretend things were easy. She didn’t call the waters something else. She named them.
For me, the waters have often looked like anxiety.
The anxiety of scan results. The anxiety of saying goodbye to people as they leave a hospital room. The anxiety that appears unexpectedly when life feels normal and then suddenly doesn’t.
Prayer has not removed those waters. Instead, prayer has helped me remain afloat within them. I suspect many people reading this know exactly what I mean. Perhaps your waters are illness. Perhaps they are financial pressure, relationship breakdown, grief or uncertainty about the future.
Many of us spend enormous amounts of energy trying to push anxiety away. Prayer invites us into something different. Prayer teaches us to acknowledge the waters honestly while trusting that God remains present within them.
Learning to swim
Over the past year, I have started thinking about faith as learning to swim. Swimming does not stop the water existing. It does not change the depth. It does not remove the waves. What it does is teach us how to move through them.
That is increasingly how I understand prayer. Prayer is not always a rescue boat arriving to carry us out of difficult circumstances. Sometimes prayer is learning new strokes. A whispered prayer before an appointment. A deep breath while waiting for results. A text message asking others to pray. A decision to attend church when anxiety says stay home. A choice to trust God’s character when we cannot trust our circumstances.
These may seem like small things. Yet they are often profound acts of faith. When anxiety tells us we are alone, prayer reminds us of God’s presence. When anxiety tells us the future must be controlled, prayer teaches surrender. When anxiety tells us to retreat inwards, prayer opens us outwards towards God and towards others.
Yet I am learning, slowly and imperfectly, that prayer is not about pretending the waters aren’t there. It is about discovering that God is there too.
Learning to swim does not mean becoming fearless. It means discovering that fear does not have to determine our direction.
Praying anyway
One of the greatest lessons I am learning is that prayer is valuable even when it doesn’t immediately change how I feel.
Much of contemporary Christian culture is understandably attracted to breakthrough stories. We celebrate miraculous answers, dramatic transformations and instant peace.
Those stories matter. But they are not the whole story. Sometimes faithful prayer looks less dramatic. Sometimes it is simply turning up. Opening Scripture when concentration is difficult. Whispering a few words when we cannot manage more. Allowing others to pray on our behalf when we have run out of words ourselves.
Prayer is not measured by eloquence or certainty. It is measured by relationship. Some days my prayers feel strong and confident. Other days they feel fragile and incomplete. I am learning that God receives both. The value of prayer is not found in our ability to perform it perfectly. The value is found in the God who listens.
The presence beneath the water
The promise of Scripture is not that believers will avoid deep waters. It is that God will meet us there. That promise has become increasingly precious to me. I would never have chosen this journey. I would never have chosen the lessons anxiety has taught me.
But I have discovered something beautiful within the struggle. God’s presence is not reserved for the moments when we feel peaceful, confident or strong. His presence extends equally into our fear.
Into our questions. Into our uncertainty. Into the middle of the night when anxiety wakes us before dawn.
The waters may still rise. There are days when mine certainly do. Yet I am learning, slowly and imperfectly, that prayer is not about pretending the waters aren’t there. It is about discovering that God is there too.
And perhaps that is what faith has been all along.
Not the absence of anxiety. Not certainty about the future. But the daily decision to keep turning towards God, to keep praying and to keep swimming.
The waters are rising. But by the grace of God, so are we.
