Jennifer Tucker
14 min read ⭑
“Anxiety is not an enemy I have to fight, but a signal for me to slow down and pay attention. I’ve learned that I can choose to respond to anxiety in a different way and it doesn’t have to spiral me into panic or drive me to hide in a bathroom stall—although if I’m honest, sometimes it still does. But that’s okay. It keeps me humble and keeps me turning to Christ for strength and peace.”
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
Well, as a military kid, I grew up all over the world. My dad was in the Air Force and was regularly stationed in new places, which meant lots of big moves for our family. I was born in South Carolina but only lived there less than a year before moving to places like Virginia, Japan, Colorado, Florida, and Italy. As a result, I attended three elementary schools, two middle schools, and three high schools. My dad retired my senior year of high school when we made our final move to Georgia, and I’ve been in Georgia ever since (more than 25 years now!).
Because we moved so much, one of the only consistent things in my life growing up was my family. And I particularly remember countless dinners around the table together. Often, we spent holidays away from extended family, so most of the time it was just the five of us—my mom, dad, two sisters, and me—around the table together.
I still live just a few minutes from my parents, and to this day, eating at their house with all my family there is my favorite place to be. My mom makes the best spaghetti sauce—an old family recipe that uses pulled pork and is slow-cooked for hours. It’s my favorite food. Every time she makes it, it brings back sweet memories. No restaurant meal on the planet compares.
There may have been a lot of changes throughout my years growing up, but my family remained a constant. I could always count on them being there, gathered at the table, sharing the mundane and meaningful moments of the day. And even though my own girls have lived in the same place their entire life, we’ve tried to incorporate the same consistency in our days, with so many dinners together around the table. In fact, our dining room table is the only piece of furniture that hasn’t been replaced in our 21 years of marriage, and I don’t know if I’ll ever have the heart to replace it. We’ve sat around the same table for the last two decades, through all the years of our girls growing up, and the memories we’ve made make any meal shared there special.
Lucie Douezi; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activities do you love and help you find spiritual renewal?
Do scrolling Pinterest and hoarding DIY ideas count? But seriously, I do love a good DIY project. There’s something about making things with my hands, whether it’s painting or knitting or whether it’s building shelves or decorating a themed cake—I find a lot of joy in making things. I just love taking simple supplies and making something new and beautiful from them. I’m not always good at what I try, but I find that the process of creating is like a deep exhale for my soul, whether the end result is exactly as I wanted or not.
My latest project has been peel-and-stick wallpaper. There’s definitely a learning curve to it, and I may have wasted a roll or two along the way, but I’ve now added various wallpapers to five rooms in our little house, and I’ll probably add more, much to my kind and patient husband’s amusement because he knows I’ll likely change my mind in a year and change it again. (I do tend to change things in my house a lot.)
Maybe it stems back to my childhood when change was a constant. Sometimes when things are the same for too long I get antsy to move stuff around, paint the walls, or switch around pictures (you don’t even want to know how many holes I have put in our walls). Often, when I’m up against a deadline or I have a particularly long to-do list and I’m feeling overwhelmed, I do a project around the house. I change something, move something, or make something. It takes my mind off of what was overwhelming me, gives me a sense of accomplishment, and engages my creativity to make something beautiful. Maybe it’s a distraction or maybe it’s procrastination, but after I work on a completely unrelated, just-for-fun project, I’m usually able to return to my not-as-fun work with renewed energy and fresh perspective.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?
Several years ago, I was in a room full of women for a ladies’ Bible study at my church. I was seated at a table with a few people that I knew, and some that I didn’t. As soon as I sat down I started physically shaking. My hands trembled, I felt my heart racing, and I had trouble focusing. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes and the room started closing in. I quickly got up and went to the bathroom. I locked myself in a stall and just cried. I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt so overwhelmed and embarrassed. I knew there was not a logical reason for me to be feeling this way, and yet here I was, alone in a bathroom stall, completely overwhelmed with anxiety.
This was unfortunately not an isolated incident in my life. I’ve struggled with anxiety for as long as I can remember. For the vast majority of the time, my anxiety is what they call “high functioning.” It’s not obvious. I hide it well. For years, I masked my anxiety beneath layers of perfectionism, people pleasing, and overworking. I had a relentless need to control every little thing in my life so that I didn’t feel the out-of-control emotions and symptoms related to my anxiety. It’s only in recent years that I have recognized my anxiety for what it really is and have been actively working to manage it in healthier ways. But I still struggle—some days more than others. But I’ve also learned that anxiety is not an enemy I have to fight but a signal for me to slow down and pay attention. I’ve learned that I can choose to respond to anxiety in a different way, and it doesn’t have to spiral me into panic or drive me to hide in a bathroom stall—although if I’m honest, sometimes it still does. But that’s ok. It keeps me humble and keeps me turning to Christ for strength and peace.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?
My first book is going out into the world this month, which is a wild and wonderful (and honestly kind of terrifying) thing. But I’m really passionate about the message of this book, and I pray that it will be a help and encouragement to all who open its pages. It’s called Breath as Prayer: Calm Your Anxiety, Focus Your Mind, and Renew Your Soul and is a collection of more than 80 breath prayers, with short reflections and a guide to this incredible spiritual practice—including details about what breath prayers are, why and how they work, and how to pray them.
This book was birthed out of a deeply difficult season of my life and the prayers in this book are what got me through some really hard days. Last year, my daughter was hospitalized for an extended time, and my anxiety was at an all-time high. During that season, breath prayers were the one spiritual practice that I found consistently helped calm my anxiety while also strengthening my faith.
Breath prayers were my lifeline in that hospital last year, and they’ve been a powerful tool to help me manage my anxiety on a daily basis. The deep breathing helps calm the physical symptoms of my anxiety, and the prayer helps me to recenter my thoughts on Christ, his presence with me, and his love for me.
My prayer is that others may find hope and help through this simple but powerful tool. Breath prayer has been so helpful to me, and I just hope it can be helpful to others, too. It helped me shift how I responded to anxiety, and I’ve found that anxiety doesn’t have to be my enemy anymore, and it doesn’t have to be a roadblock to my faith. In fact, it has been the catalyst that has deepened my faith in ways I never expected because it allows me to slow down, invite Christ into my circumstances, breathe deep in his presence, and let his peace fill all my broken and anxious places.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors, or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
I always seem to be inspired and comforted when I’m surrounded by nature, the Creator’s wildly beautiful design. The sounds of nature, the slowness of nature, the incredible creativity in nature—it’s like an exhale for my soul. And I often meet God there.
I remember sitting on the curb outside our therapist’s office last November, watching the leaves steadily fall from the trees. I just sat, watched, and listened. It was a really hard day in the middle of a string of hard days, and I was weary. But as I sat there watching the leaves fall, listening to the wind blow, God gently reminded me that this, too, is just a season.
I was mourning the things that were lost, fallen like leaves and scattered on the ground of the previous years. But that’s what winter seasons do—they strip the branches bare. What was once green and full of life is now dry and fallen and scattered. But God reminded me at that moment that it won’t always be this way. One day, someday, spring will come. He reminded my soul that new life will resurrect from what seems lost and blown away by the winds of suffering and that all that has fallen will not be for nothing.
I was not thinking any of those things when I sat down on that curb, filled with sadness and fear and weariness. But in the stillness, in the fallen leaves and the sound of the wind, God spoke to my heart and reminded me of truth that I could cling to, hope that I could hold onto. Whether it’s on a hike through the mountains or sitting on a curb outside an office, God’s wisdom and wonder fill all of creation, and I don’t know a better source of creative inspiration than the work of the Creator himself.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied actions that open our hearts to the presence of God. So spill it, which spiritual practice is workin’ best for you right now?
At the risk of being repetitive, truly the spiritual practice that is helping me most right now is breath prayer. Yeah, it’s the topic of my book, but really the book only exists because the practice has been so meaningful to me. These short and simple prayers have kept me grounded and have kept me turning my mind to Christ through some pretty hard days.
It’s not a super common practice, at least not in the faith communities I’ve been a part of, but it is a Christian practice that has actually been around for centuries. Breath prayers combine deep breathing with prayers of meditation on God’s Word. Made of just a couple of lines from Scripture, they’re prayed to the rhythm of inhales and exhales.
I have found breath prayers to be a very centering practice for me. I often begin my day by breathing deep and focusing on praying just a couple of lines from Scripture.
This helps to drown out the noise around me and focus on Christ who is with me. Very often breath prayers naturally lead me into a deeper time of prayer with God, when I honestly share my heart and allow him to speak.
One of my favorite breath prayers to pray—and the one that was my steady go-to throughout the days when I was with my daughter in the hospital—is from my favorite Psalm 23:
Inhale: Lord, you are my shepherd.
Exhale: I have all that I need.
When I’m feeling overwhelmed or anxiety is pressing in, if I take a few minutes to slow down, breathe deep, and pray this simple prayer, I can calm both my body and mind and press on with renewed peace.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources—lots of things that have truly impacted our faith lives. But you know about some really great stuff, too. What are three resources that have impacted you?
Three resources that have impacted me are One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp, Spiritual Rhythm by Mark Buchanan, and the devotional app called Lectio 365.
Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts made a huge impact on my life, shifting how I walked through my days. I tend to lean toward melancholy, and it’s easy for me to focus on all that is bad or wrong or hard. Her book opened my eyes to what it means to be truly grateful in all things, to look for the good, to notice the small gifts of grace that fill my life, to see all the little and big ways that God shows me that he loves me. And even the hardest things, what she calls “hard eucharisteo,” can be gifts that we can be grateful for when we trust that God is always good and we are always loved.
Mark Buchanan’s Spiritual Rhythm is a book I reread often. I’ve underlined and marked up so many pages in this book. The first time I read it, about 10 years ago, I was really struggling to try to find balance and a rhythm. I was often overwhelmed, and I was overworking and spreading myself way too thin. This book shifted my perspective on my life and my soul, helping me see it through the lens of seasons: winter, spring, summer, and fall. I resonated with his words, “I had worked many years with rickety logic: religious busyness is the same thing as spiritual maturity. The more you do, the more you love Jesus.”
I had been working myself to exhaustion and still feeling like I was falling apart and not making any progress. I was trying to live outside of the actual season of my soul. This book shifted some really wonky ways of thinking that I had adopted—and I still go back to Buchanan’s words because I often need reminding. As I wrote in the margins of one of the pages, “It’s not about finding balance—it’s about living in rhythm with the season of my life and the season of my heart.”
Lectio 365 is an app that I discovered a couple of years ago, and I still use it nearly every day. It is a daily devotional resource that has morning and evening devotions. The morning devotions are focused on learning to pray the Bible and the evening ones help to still my soul and reflect on the day while preparing to rest each night. Before using this app, I had never really done much in the way of liturgical practices. The churches I grew up in and have been a part of are not liturgical at all. But I found myself increasingly drawn to the rhythms of liturgy and this app was such a significant addition to my personal daily prayer practices. I love the rhythm of the devotions, each day following the same pattern of Scripture and prayer with intentional pauses to reflect and pray. I especially love to listen to the audio devotion. The music is so soothing and I love that the voices of those reading the devotions vary and are from all around the world, a beautiful representation of the global church.
We all have things we cling to to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season—and tell us what it’s done for you.
A resource that has been right by my side the last few months is the book Praying the Scriptures for your Children by Jodie Berndt. My oldest is in college and my youngest has been battling some major health conditions, and I’ve been wrestling with a lot of fear and worry for both of them. The older they get, the less control I have over their lives and their choices (as it should be), but I’ve been struggling to let go of my worry and trust they will be okay. This book has been such a help to me, giving me specific Scriptures to pray for them and encouraging my heart as I trust God with their lives.
I love how the book is laid out with very specific topics that you can pray about concerning your children. So I tend to jump around and pray for the thing that is weighing most on my heart each day. Jodie includes stories full of examples and encouragement and wisdom that come from years of personal experience and a deep well of faith. Every topic includes a couple of pages full of “Prayers You Can Use.” Each prayer is based on a verse of Scripture, and she even gives the words to pray if you’re having trouble knowing what to pray. I have found it to be a really helpful guide to learning how to pray more specifically for my girls. And the prayers help me give my worries to God and lay them all in his hands as I trust him with their lives and their futures, no matter what may come.
QUESTION #8: dream
God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
If the last four years have taught me anything, it’s to hold my plans loosely and to live open-handed, willing to accept whatever it is God gives me. I never in a million years would have dreamed that I’d be a published author right now—it was never in any of my plans at all. But God has a way of surprising me. He opened doors I didn’t even know existed and has led me down paths I never dreamed of. Some of the paths have been harder and darker than I ever could have imagined, and we are actually still walking one of those paths as one of our daughters has ongoing medical needs. Her healing journey is a long process, I honestly don’t know how the next few months or even years may unfold. So right now I’m really just loving my family and taking one day at a time while keeping my hands open and my heart willing to accept whatever God may have for me next.
As far as my work, I am currently illustrating a couple of coloring books—those are always fun creative projects for me, and never really feel like work. They will be released in the next year or two. And I still do graphic design and a lot of behind-the-scenes work for others who are doing some amazing things for Christ. I think my comfort zone is found more in working quietly in the shadows, so I will be fully content if God lets me stay in the background and simply support others who are doing more visible “big” things. I think there’s something to be said for finding contentment in the small and the slow and the quiet things. God is growing me through it all, and who knows what he might have waiting for me just around the corner? I’m sure he will surprise me again and again.
How do we respond when life feels overwhelming? Do we grasp for control? Numb our pain with temporary comforts? Lose trust in those around us?
The Lord knows how easy it is for us to resort to those kinds of coping mechanisms. But Psalm 103:13-14 says that, instead of getting frustrated with us, “As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (ESV).
That’s why we love Jennifer Tucker’s take on Breath Prayers—an ancient Christian tradition that the desert mothers and fathers used as a way to pray without ceasing (see 1 Thessalonians 5:17). These short, heartfelt prayers are a helpful way to entrust our limited strength to the One who sees us, knows us, and shows us compassion.
Jennifer Tucker is the author of Breath as Prayer: Calm Your Anxiety, Focus Your Mind, and Renew Your Soul. An artist, graphic designer, wife, and mother, Jennifer is a devoted follower of Jesus and an advocate for mental health. She shares her heart and art online at littlehousestudio.net.
