Anxieties are agitated things; thoughts that pace the floor, feelings that bite their lips, a right thumb pressing deep into the left hand to push and scrub into skin.

Anxieties found me before I was a pastor. Bouts of anxiety dapple the biology of my kin. Add to that my own share of providential trauma along with ordinary cares proportionate to my age and calling and both body and soul contribute plenty to these ants-in-the-pants-moods that crawl about with their jitters and creepers.

Becoming a Jesus follower and a pastor did not un-anxiety me.

There, one step from eternity, I was held back by the beauty of the natural world around me. If there could be such beauty even in winter, surely there had to be some answer to my questions besides meaninglessness. I walked back to the bus stop and returned to the university determined to keep looking.