Concrete Boots, Turnip Hands, and the Mercy of God

I am trying to become the sort of person who receives the mercy of God instead of merely believing in it.

That distinction matters to me, because I can talk about grace with deep conviction and still treat myself with very little of it. I can preach patience to others, offer compassion to friends, make room for weakness in the people I love, and still turn on myself the moment I feel limited, tired, anxious, forgetful, or slow.

Most of us are better at offering mercy than receiving it.

We can see context in someone else’s life. We can understand why they are overwhelmed, why they lost their train of thought, why they needed a moment, why they did not quite have the words. We can remember that one difficult moment does not define the whole person.

But with ourselves, we are often less generous.

We treat a temporary struggle like a character flaw. We mistake a difficult moment for a verdict. We forget that grace is not only something to proclaim. It is something to live under.

For me, one of the places this shows up is memory.

Anxiety brain makes retrieving a thought from memory feel like trying to get a can of soup from a cupboard on the other side of the room, except the room is filled with five feet of caramel, I’m wearing concrete boots, and my hands have turned into turnips.

Which is to say, technically the thought is there.

That is the annoying part.

It is not always that I do not know the answer. It is not always that I have forgotten the person, the fact, the point, the story, the reason I walked into the room, or the incredibly important thing I was about to say five seconds ago. Sometimes it is all in there. Somewhere. Sitting on a shelf. Fully stocked. Label facing outward. Ready to be used.

But between me and the shelf is the thick, sticky, exhausting resistance of anxiety.

And anxiety does not simply make you afraid. It makes everything heavier than it needs to be.

A simple question can begin to feel like an interrogation. A familiar name can become a filing cabinet with all the drawers jammed shut. A normal conversation can feel, for a moment, like a pop quiz you did not study for, even when the subject is your own life. You can feel the thought somewhere inside you, but reaching it becomes strangely laborious. You wade through the caramel. You drag the concrete boots. You reach out your hands, only to discover they are completely useless root vegetables.

And then, of course, you start overthinking the fact that you are overthinking.

Which is deeply unhelpful.

There is a strange humility to this kind of experience. Not dramatic humiliation. Not the sort that makes for a compelling testimony video with soft piano underneath. Just the small, ordinary frustration of feeling like your own brain has hidden your keys while maintaining direct eye contact.

You know you are capable. You know you are not stupid. You know you are not careless. You know that, on a better day, a day where you feel you have been given the keys to drive, people believe in you, or perhaps just the noise of life is less, with less pressure, less untold expectation, and perhaps fewer imaginary turnip-related complications, you would be able to access what you need perfectly well.

But anxiety has a way of making competence feel temporarily inaccessible.

It does not remove the gift. Sometimes it just blocks the pathway to it.

That distinction matters.

Because when you are anxious, especially when your memory becomes less cooperative, it is very easy to start telling yourself cruel stories.

I am useless.

I am failing.

I am too much.

I am not enough.

I should be better than this by now.

Everyone else seems to manage.

Why can’t I just be normal?

The problem is that anxiety is not only an experience. It is also a narrator.

It does not simply make the room difficult to cross. It stands beside you while you are trying to cross it and offers commentary.

Look at you.

Still stuck.

Still slow.

Still ridiculous.

Still disappointing people.

Still not over this.

And because anxiety often speaks in a voice that sounds like urgency, we mistake it for truth.

But urgency is not the same as truth.

A racing heart is not a prophet.

A locked-up mind is not a verdict.

A difficult moment is not a final judgement on your character, your calling, your competence, or your future.

Sometimes your body is afraid.

Sometimes your brain is overloaded.

Sometimes your nervous system has decided that an ordinary moment requires extraordinary effort.

Sometimes the can of soup is still on the shelf, but the room is full of caramel, and that is simply what we are dealing with today.

There is grace in naming that.

Not as an excuse for never growing. Not as a way of avoiding responsibility. Not as a permanent identity to hide inside. But as an honest account of reality.

This is anxiety.

This is what it does.

This is hard.

This is not all of me.

I think that last sentence matters most.

This is not all of me.

An anxious moment can feel total. It can feel like it defines the whole room, the whole day, the whole self. But it does not. You are not merely your worst five minutes. You are not merely the version of yourself that froze, forgot, stumbled, over-explained, shut down, or could not retrieve the word you absolutely knew.

You are a whole person.

You are embodied.

You are limited.

You are learning.

You are loved.

You are still here.

And for the Christian, this is where the story has to widen.

Because Scripture never treats human weakness as surprising to God.

“For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:14, ESV)

That verse has become increasingly precious to me, because it tells me something I am constantly tempted to forget. God is not scandalised by my limits. He is not pacing heaven, bewildered by the fact that I am made of dust and occasionally behave dustily.

He knows.

He remembers.

That means God does not look at my anxious brain and say, “What on earth is wrong with you?”

He looks with the knowledge of a Maker. The compassion of a Father. The patience of a Shepherd.

And this matters because so much of anxiety is the fear that weakness makes us less lovable. Less useful. Less faithful. Less impressive to God and less acceptable to others.

But the gospel does not begin with our impressive stability. It begins with mercy.

Jesus does not come for the well-polished, the emotionally unflappable, the spiritually impressive, and the people whose inner lives are neatly alphabetised. He comes for the weary. The burdened. The sick. The scattered. The poor in spirit. The ones who know they need help.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28, ESV)

Not “come to me once you have calmed down.”

Not “come to me once you can explain yourself clearly.”

Not “come to me once your hands are no longer turnips.”

Come to me.

That is the invitation.

And maybe faith, on anxious days, is not always heroic confidence. Maybe sometimes faith is the small act of turning toward Jesus while your brain is still foggy and your chest is still tight. Maybe it is whispering, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24b, ESV). Maybe it is borrowing words from the Psalms when your own words are stuck somewhere across the caramel room.

Maybe it is admitting, “I cannot get to the can of soup right now, but I know my Father can.”

That is not defeat. That is dependence.

And dependence is not the opposite of maturity. In the kingdom of God, dependence is often where maturity begins.

So yes, sometimes anxiety brain makes ordinary life feel absurdly difficult. Sometimes memory is a locked cupboard. Sometimes the room is caramel. Sometimes the boots are concrete. Sometimes the hands are turnips.

But God is not waiting on the other side of the room, arms crossed, disappointed that it is taking so long.

He is near to the brokenhearted.

He is gentle with the weak.

He gives grace for today, not just for the ideal version of us we keep hoping to become.

And as I learn to receive the mercy of God, I am learning to stop treating myself in ways God does not treat me.

I am learning that mercy is not permission to give up. It is the ground beneath my feet as I keep going.

I am learning that grace does not make me less responsible. It makes responsibility possible without shame.

I am learning that my limitations do not erase my calling, my competence, or the good work God has given me to do.

And when I cannot reach what I need as quickly as I would like, I may discover, again, that he has reached for me first.