Pictures for the Chronically Anxious

an inner image that has changed my life, plus the link for tomorrow's office hour with an editor

Office Hour with an Editor is tomorrow (11/12/25)!

Drop in between 1:30-2:30 PM (EST) to talk about anything writerly. Get feedback. Get answers. Get support. Get community. It will be a brilliant time with friends. Do come.

Join the ZOOM meeting using the link at the bottom of this post. This is open to anyone with a paid subscription!

I am, as Joan Didion would put it in The Year of Magical Thinking, a cool customer.

At least I thought I was.

That changed a couple months ago, when hiking with my sister Rachel I made the offhand comment for her to be careful, because I could already visualize her falling off the precipice to her death. (And let me tell you—it wasn’t a pretty sight.)

She looked at me and tilted her head and said, “Deidre. That’s not normal.”

And then only a week or two later, another friend said almost those exact same words to me when I voiced what felt like another natural concern. “I don’t think that’s normal,” she winced.

It was only then that it began to dawn on me that normal for me may not be normal for everyone else, and that the baseline I’ve been living with for years is, in fact, a tame type of anxiety, so quietly persistent that I did not ever think to look at her and think, “Wait, you don’t belong here.”

But I do admit there have been times in my life when I’ve realized I am never quite settled—how can you be, when you’re always anticipating a catastrophe?—and thought, “I would like to know what it’s like to be as serene as autumn leaves on water—or as my husband on any given day of the week.”

Anyhow, now that it had been named and called out, I couldn’t unsee it. And when I couldn’t unsee it, it began to bother me more and more. I started to wonder what it would feel like if it was not there, could hardly even imagine what a relief that would be. I very much wanted it gone.

Okay, but can you see why I would have been scared on this trail? I mean, what could go wrong?

---

If you’ve been around here for a while, you’ve heard me describe how I sometimes see pictures when I pray, and those pictures have done more to heal me than just about anything else, ever.

I wrote about one such picture in the post How to Forgive Someone, and another in the one called How to Hear From God.

[Before you start to think I’m some woo-woo kind of person, I’m not. I don’t know if you find that a disappointment or relief, but I’m just—pretty average. I do however believe that God loves us, so he talks to us in ways we understand, and it turns out that pictures seem to make the most sense to me.]

Anyway, last week I started talking to God about this anxiety I’d recently become aware of. It wasn’t anything fancy—I just told him I noticed it was there, and would he please do something about that because he wants his kids to be free and have abundant life, and I wasn’t feeling that free after all? I also told him I was tired, and that I didn’t know how to help myself on my own. I said, Please help.

Nothing happened immediately. I asked him again the next day, and maybe for a couple more days after that. But one day, during a time when I was alone and it was quiet, I asked him again to show up with some sort of answer, some sort of liberation from this dull, ever-present disquiet.

I have replayed what I saw next over and over since it happened, and it has brought me such relief and hopefulness that I wondered whether it might also help someone here. I really hope it does.

So, bumbling as it might come out, I’m going to try to explain the picture to you:

I was in a room made of dirt.

It was exactly what you would expect a room of dirt to be like: dark, dank, and all-consuming. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all made of this humus, and there were no windows. I was sitting on the floor, leaning up against one side of the room, and though it wasn’t exactly comfortable or hospitable, it was familiar.

Then the door—I hadn’t even known there was a door—opened a crack, and golden light flooded into the room. Jesus was standing in the doorway, and he gestured for me to come with him. I made some sort of excuse, something like, Oh hi Jesus, I would love to come, but look, I’m chained here. This is where I have always been and it’s where I will always be. I don’t love it, but that’s the way it is.

He shook his head, but it was in a kind way. He pointed at my ankles. There were no chains. He held out a hand and helped me up. He threaded my arm through his and, with nothing standing in our way, we walked out of the dirt room, leaving the door ajar on its hinges.

For a few moments, we stood together in a hallway, and the hallway itself felt like eternity. I don’t think it had a floor, or walls. No beginning. No end. Just the wide-open door to that dirt room on our right and, oh, what was that? It was another door, just behind us. Would I like to go? Jesus asked.

I stood staring at the door to that dirt room for a minute, felt as though it had some sort of gravitational pull linked directly to my gut. I hated that room, and also felt like I needed to go back, right away.

Well let’s just go have a peek, Jesus said, steering me down the hallway by my elbow.

The other room was made of glass, or at least that’s the impression it gave. It seemed like it hardly had walls at all, and the best way I can describe it is that it was awash in brilliant yellow, maybe a little like the way it feels to point your face straight at the sun with your eyelids closed. There was a jolly roar coming from that room; they were clearly in the middle of a party in there, and the sound itself was also brilliant yellow, if sound can have a color.

When we came to the threshold—that is, Jesus and me—the jolly roar continued but the closest people in the room looked up from their conversations and their drinks, and it was the most incredible thing: they seemed to know me, and they looked at me in a way that said, “She’s here! We’ve been waiting so long and now she’s joined us. Hoorah, finally!”

And what’s more, I knew them too. For starters I had walked right into a conversation between C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, and they both smiled and held up a drink as if to toast my arrival. But out of the masses more faces emerged. My grandmother. My aunt. My mother-in-law. Even my nephew I was never able to hold earthside—but there he was, all boyish and shining and dashing. They had heard I was here, and they were all laughing and laughing and laughing. The jubilation of saints. That’s the title I would give that image, if I could hang it on my wall.

A little while later we left, and I stood in the hall with Jesus once more. We had that feeling that clings to you after a good party: enlivened, hyper-connected, a little breathless with fun. But down the hall, the door still hung open to that dirt room.

I guess I better get back, I said. Thank you for that.

There’s nothing holding you there, he said, tilting his head toward the old dungeon. That other room? It’s your birthright. It’s yours. That door is standing open too.

Photo by LUCKY LUCKY on Unsplash

That’s where the picture ended, at least that day. With both doors standing open, and me in that big gray eternal hallway.

That night as I went about the evening, though, I had about fifty occasions where anxiety tried to settle in next to me. I almost moved aside to make room for her, to sigh and accept her, but then I would remember that room, that brilliant bright jolly room.

The pull toward the dirt room was strong. But now I knew there was another room, another way. And it felt like—what? Something like the warm liberation of a sprawling-open summer on the last day of school. Maybe it even felt like Eden, before all that business with the apple.

It was irresistible and yet I hardly believed I would be allowed to walk in and join those jolly old saints at any given time. Still, I held that picture in my mind all night.

The next day—and somewhat unexpectedly—the scene resumed, as if God and I were picking up a conversation in the place where we’d left off. Here’s how it went:

I was standing in the hallway once again, and I could not stop looking at the door to the dirt room. Have you ever been invited to do something wonderful and glorious, but have had to say no because you’ve already committed to some other drab responsibility that you resent with every ounce of your being? Well that’s how it felt, standing there looking at that door.

I was torn between “responsibility” and freedom. And my responsibility, I thought, was to be in the dark room, trying to control every possible negative outcome with my ever-prepared mind.

But while I was standing there watching, Jesus came along again. This time, he had a big old hammer, and an armful of nails and wood. Without a word, he closed that door with a definite thud, then got to work securing it shut by boarding it up. Once he had finished he gave it a shake for good measure. His handiwork held firm.

Do you remember when Adam and Eve were sent from Eden and God called for the cherubim to guard the entrance with their flaming swords? Well in that moment, Jesus let out a little whistle, and those cherubim—how could I have known it was them? Well I did—appeared. They moved in front of the door to that dirt room.

Jesus looked me, probably standing there with my mouth open, and said, You’re never going back in that room.

There have been plenty of times since this happened that I’ve intended to go back to that room, almost reflexively.

It’s like when you aren’t thinking and find yourself driving somewhere you didn’t intend to go, just because your subconscious evidently wanted to take you there. But then, I’ll arrive at the door and see those cherubim guarding the door and remember watching Jesus seal it closed and think, Oh yes. I don’t belong there anymore. And then I’ll remember the laughing saints, and though I’m still learning to feel quite at home there, I’ll go down the hallway and join them.

And, dear one? The next time you feel anxiety trying to sit down and pop the footrest on the couch beside you, I hope you’ll picture this room of laughing saints and remember the door is open for you, too.

---

It’s Veterans Day. Thank you to all the veterans here who have served our country—my family and I are so incredibly grateful for your service.

The latest episode of The Second Cup Show is a conversation with

Lindsay Swoboda

, who wrote a wonderful memoir about her decades of experience with military life alongside her Marine husband. It helped me understand more about the depth of sacrifice that service members (and their families) make every single day—but it also helped me realize that her story is also my story, and that at the heart of it all, we all have to learn how to keep our spirits alive even in the midst of discomfort, change, and seasons of disenchantment.

I think you’ll really like it.

Here’s the link for Office Hours with an Editor TOMORROW (11/12/25) from 1:30-2:30 PM (EST):