Rebekah Lyons
16 min read ⭑
“When we set our minds on the Spirit, he brings life and peace. When we walk in accordance with what he wills for us, he will make a way. He will complete what he begins. We don’t have to make things happen on our own.”
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
There’s much more to a meal than palate and preference. How does your go-to order at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?
My go-to meal near my home here in Franklin, Tennessee, is an acai bowl. I get the Bombom from the Franklin Juice Company. It’s my favorite because it’s refreshing with lots of fruit and all the good stuff. I like lots of chunks and layers — and it’s so refreshing. I grew up in Florida, so I tend to like meals that are cool because we always had crazy-hot summers. So anything like a slushy or something that’s got berries, that’s going to be my go-to.
But it’s more experiential, for sure, than just sitting down and ordering food. It’s so easy to have a conversation over a Bombom bowl. So, I’ll go there with friends and we’ll grab a bowl and then we’ll sit outside in the park or whatever and just catch up or connect. There’s like a grassy area nearby, and I’m all about getting outside as much as humanly possible, especially in this lockdown season. Just for mental health and Vitamin D. It’s essential. being outside literally calms me and reminds me that God is in control. So any time I can be outside eating a Bombom bowl with a friend — that’s what I need in the season.
Kristoff Hart; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests, but we tend to hide them. What do you love doing that might surprise (or shock) people?
I love pickleball. I picked it up a couple of years ago. I love it because it’s competitive and fun. I’m definitely competitive, but I like that it’s fun, too. You can do it with groups and go in the round. It’s been a fun small-group thing and something Gabe and I do on vacations. The other thing I love doing is hiking or walking trails — walking anywhere outside — and listening to podcasts.
That’s less for competition but more for nourishment. I just like learning on the move. I think I retain what I hear better when I’m moving and engage with the content better. For me, embodiment is a big, big deal for healing. And that means getting physical, literally.
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?
My kryptonite is control. That’s always the barometer for how healthy I am in any particular season: The more I try to control things and the more I strive, the more I won’t sleep well and the more I feel the physical symptoms of stress. And control, for me, is really just masking a fear of failure — fear of my own failure or my team’s failure or my family’s failure or my kids’ failure. It’s me trying to protect against all of that. And what I’ve learned the hard way is that failure is relative. Something might not go the way we planned it to go; life might not look like we want it to look — and that can be a real gift. It might be a grace that opens us up to something different. If we are always killing it and successful in the things we venture out to do, we wouldn’t try new things. We wouldn’t have to. We wouldn’t be obedient to the nudges or whispers of God, to that voice that says, “Hey, this over here is the way. Now walk in it” (see Isaiah 30:21). So I’ve decided to try to want to be obedient more than successful. And I’m learning that obedience releases control. I can’t know the outcome when I obey God and take a risk, when I venture into a risky situation, but I think that’s when I’m closest to God. When I am willing to be dependent and surrender, that’s when I’m most free.
The toughest area for me is releasing control in motherhood. I found out six hours after my first son was born that he had signs of Down’s syndrome. I didn’t know that going into it, and that moment changed the trajectory of my life — at age 26. And I grieved the loss of something. I thought things would look one way, and they would forever look different. I was never more raw and honest and tender before God. It was just such a shift — an unexpected shift. I learned that life never goes as you thought it would. It won’t go as you planned. And is that a real gift? For me, it was a real gift. But I wouldn’t have been able to say that had I not just said, “Okay, Lord, I’m going to release what I know.”
God told me in that season that you cannot see the unknown until you release the known. The known was my plan. And I couldn’t see God’s plan until I released my plan. He was calling me to surrender. He was inviting me to accept what is. And when we can accept what is, then, my goodness, like that opens us up to the tender vulnerability of learning and growth — and to freedom.
Then, a decade later, we moved to New York, and I started to have panic attacks. I started doubling down on control because I felt powerless in claustrophobic spaces. Again, I tried to control my environment. I would avoid the trains, the planes, elevators, the subways, the crowds in New York City. I would step into an elevator or a subway car and then panic and try to reopen the elevator or subway doors. Don’t try that. That doesn’t work. But it was me, just trying so desperately to control my panic attack — if I go this way, or if I do this thing. And yet, the more I tried, the more I tried to pivot my life, the more enslaved I became. I became a shell of myself.
It wasn’t until about a year and a half in, that I turned and cried out to God. Rescue me. Deliver me. I cannot do this without you. And, at that moment, my body was flooded with peace. It was the first time I didn’t have to run from the room or escape a situation for the panic to subside. That pain, that journey of disruption or interruption, taught me a new lesson — that not only do I have to trust God with my mothering, but I also have to trust him with my health, with my body, with what my capacity is, knowing that he is the one who orders my days. God was asking me to trust him with my whole life.
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?
Since that day of rescue, September 20th of 2011, it’s been a decade-long journey of healing from mental illness. I had anxiety, depression and panic disorder. In those days in New York City, I would rock in the fetal position in my closet. I was in my mid-30s, and I didn’t know a way out. But when God flooded me with peace, that began an onset of relief and a journey of healing. A healing journey that continues to this day.
So I would say my life’s work now is to be, quite frankly, one of the first people in the church space to talk about mental health. As a raw, chronic oversharer, I try to tell the good, bad and the ugly of it all — and how God drew near, without shame, without condemnation, but just with a real tenderness and invited me to into new rhythms. So my life’s work now is about living in a way that gives guardrails for health and the freedom that comes from constraint. The rhythms I live out every day are rest, restore, connect, create. I also wrote the “anxiety trilogy” — “Freefall to Fly: A Breathtaking Journey Toward a Life of Meaning,” “You Are Free: Be Who You Already Are” and “Rhythms of Renewal: Trading Stress and Anxiety for a Life of Peace and Purpose.” I just like to create resources that help people go on healing journeys. Helping people trust God with their inner lives — in the rest rhythm. Trusting God with their physical lives — the restore rhythm. Trusting God with their relational lives — the connect rhythm. Forgiveness, grace, apology, commitment and bearing burdens. And then, finally, trusting God with their vocational lives, through their careers.
So, for me, that looks like teaching or writing, but it also looks like recovering the passions of my youth — like hobbies and music and art — rounding myself out. We are not the sum of what we produce. We are the sum of our belovedness. And out of that wellspring comes an overflow from which we can serve other people well. So, that’s what I do. Write and teach, and when I’m doing it from freedom and not control, it’s really rewarding.
I am launching a new book called “A Surrendered Yes: 52 Devotions to Let Go and Live Free.” It is all about the daily yes. We like big yeses, right? Move across the country. Shift careers. The adrenaline. The high of change. But on the other side of that is the surrendered, daily yes. It requires faith and trust and perseverance and endurance. I think letting go daily is sometimes harder than the big thing. So I am inviting readers to look at the ways they are saying yes to God or to themselves or to others in their everyday lives. At the things they might need to let go of like resentment or unforgiveness or comparison or striving or depression. I encourage readers to really hand things over to God to develop a real willingness to say, God, I’m going to be relentless in this pursuit of handing things over to you because I trust that you hold me and you hold all things together and that you are enough. You’re going to give me the grace to keep going. My goal, my hope, is that this book will help people endure — that no matter what trial they are walking through, whatever suffering, they would find the help they need in Scripture. The Bible says that suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope (see Romans 5:3,4). So no matter what we’re walking in, whether it’s easy or hard in a given season, there is a sweetness in surrendering all of it back to him and being a carrier of hope.
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?
In my morning routine this morning, the Holy Spirit prompted me with this phrase, “Set your mind on the Spirit, which leads to life and peace.” I had to Google it, and I realized that it came from Romans 8:6. When we set our mind on the things of the flesh, it leads to death. But when we set our mind on the things of the spirit, it leads to life and peace. And I realized that when I see death in my life — the death of dreams, death of relationships, death of energy, death of desire — it’s because I’m setting my mind on the fleshly outcomes that the world tries to promise and deliver, but never really can. Whether it’s wealth, success, popularity, numbers of followers or likes, or whatever we try to use to prove that we’re worthy of something, we’re setting our minds on the temporal outcomes that are so fleeting. But when we set our minds on the Holy Spirit, who is the author of life, invigorating us at every moment, he’s that regenerative God who’s always doing a new thing every day. Then we live in life and peace. We have new life.
Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10, ESV). And that life is the zoe life of divine, eternal resurrection power. He’s, in essence, saying, I have that available for you every day. So you can either set your mind on the outcomes that you’re strategizing to get and are failing at — which cause you to feel more shame and unworthiness and separation from me as a result — or you can set your mind on my lavish love for you. On the fact that all your days were written and planned before even one of them began. On the facts that I go before you and that I bring people around. And if that thing you’re trying to make happen, isn’t happening, it might be because it’s not the best thing for you. And so, let it go. Let it go.
When we set our minds on the Spirit, he brings life and peace. When we walk in accordance with what he wills for us, he will make a way. He will complete what he begins. We don’t have to make things happen on our own.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Some people divide things sacred and things secular. But you know, God can surprise us in unlikely places. How do you find spiritual renewal in so-called “nonspiritual” activities?
The line between secular and sacred is very thin. In fact, I believe that everything is spiritual and sacred because God created everything we encounter. He literally created everything we encounter — every person, every tree, every plant. He’s the Author of Life. So, for example, if you’re at a concert and the music is not lifting up God — maybe it’s actually attacking God — there’s still a supernatural battle happening, that you’re encountering. There are lost people who are starved for affection or starved for love. They’re starved to be known. And that’s a sacred thing. That’s a spiritual thing. And God is inviting us into all those places and is asking us, Will you be my light? Will you be the carriers of light, no matter where you go?
Everything is spiritual. Every encounter. Every encounter in nature and creation is spiritual. It’s like God saying, Do you delight in what I made for you? Do you delight in me? Do you feel my delight in you? And can you take all of that delight to the world? Can you pay attention to people, make eye contact? Ask them questions? Listen to their stories and their struggles? Be a carrier of the gospel of peace? We are made to carry peace. And I believe that when we put on the armor of God, we look at those feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. We are actually made to be carriers of peace. So that means that everywhere you go, if your presence brings the peace of God with you, then it’s spiritual.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources — lots of things that have truly impacted our faith. But you know about some really great stuff too. What are three of your favorite resources?
My nickname in fourth grade was “Bekah Books” because we didn’t have a TV until I was in eighth grade. My parents were school teachers, so all I had were books. So these three resources are going to be books because I learned about life through the power of narrative stories in those pages — from those protagonists venturing out.
My first favorite resource is Victor Frankel’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning.” And it’s because I was searching for meaning in my midlife crisis, in my midlife of panic attacks that I described earlier. I read that book in that season, and I felt such a tight connection with Frankl. He’s a Holocaust survivor, a Jewish man. He survived four concentration camps in three years. He was a psychiatrist in Vienna, Austria, and his goal was to have zero suicides in one year in the whole country. And it happened. Unlike Sigmund Freud, who said we are made for pleasure, or Alfred Adler, who said we’re made for power, Frankl believed that we were made for meaning. He drew from his Hebrew faith. As a result, he developed something called Logotherapy, which is a therapeutic approach that helps people find personal meaning in life. It’s a form of psychotherapy that’s focused on the future and on our ability to endure hardship and suffering through a search for purpose.
Man’s search for Meaning is the story of Frankl in those concentration camps and how he found meaning to stay alive and how he had bravery and suffering, how he had work that compelled him to keep going. He would write and keep little scraps of his writing that would hide in his garments. And how he had the love of his family. The restoration of the family is what kept him alive. So, for me, that was a monumental book. If you’re looking for meaning, if you’re questioning — Does my life matter? — if you’re having an existential crisis, this is a book that will center you.
The next book is Parker Palmer’s “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation.” I’m sure you sense a theme. I really believe that my purpose is to help people find theirs because the root of anxiety is unfulfilled responsibility — which means, we know we’re made for something, but we’re not doing it. We’re not leaning into it. There’s a gap there. So “Let Your Life Speak” is all about closing that gap. It’s just an excellent book. I read it when I needed it. It was a gift to me as a resource.
And the last one would be “The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves” by Curt Thompson. He'‘ a modern-day psychiatrist. And his book is one of the most transformative healing books that I’ve read in my life. My life’s work is really to pair faith and science together for our mental health — the idea that the fullness of capacity and thriving in joyful communion with God comes from our loving him with our heart, soul, mind and strength. So it’s getting that mind in an ordered place so that we can run the race with endurance. And “The Soul of Shame” was catalytic for me because I didn’t realize how loud my inner critic was. I didn’t think I actually had shame. I didn’t have a big story that I pointed back to and was very secretive about. But my inner critic, the attacking bully voice of shame, saying that I’m not enough was very loud and on repeat in my life. Not enough as a mom. Not enough as a wife. Not enough as a mother of kids with special needs. Not enough as a teacher. Not enough as an author. And I would condemn myself, even with the grace of God that I would preach. I would still personally, privately condemn myself. I was never quite enough. And that is the book that helped set me free.
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.
I love the book “Every Moment Holy” by Douglas Kaine McKelvey. He offers liturgies for everyday moments. There’s a liturgy for morning coffee, a liturgy for changing diapers, a liturgy for gardening, a liturgy for the first fire of the season or for a birthday or a celebration. It’s basically just inviting God’s presence and nearness into everyday things — doing laundry, even.
I think that sometimes we think that some things are spiritual and some things are secular. But God dwells in all things. And so “Every Moment Holy” helps me recognize God’s presence and nearness when I might rather complain and be grumpy or just wish a moment would be over. It helps me invite God into those everyday menial tasks in which he dwells.
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?
I am all fascinated with resilience. I’m fascinated about how we can stand firm when adversity keeps coming because adversity is just part of our lives in our culture today. I also tend to prophetically write a couple of years ahead. I remember in 2019 when Rhythms of Renewal came out, I wrote that we’re a society in the throes of a collective panic attack. Little did I know that, five months later, we would be on lockdown. I had no comprehension and everyone got all this free time, all this free time to start practicing these rhythms of renewal. And I think the Lord, once quarantine began, gave me a message of resilience. What is it? What is it going to take for the people of God to press on? And not just press on, but overcome and persevere and endure. And that’s why I’m researching people through the centuries, asking, What did that look like for them? What did it look like for them to stand firm in the face of constant adversity? And what is that going to look like for us?
Here’s the thing. We are strangers and aliens in a foreign land. Therefore, we’ve got to stand firm and live flourishing lives that run counter to all the bad news in the world. If we, as a people, can live those kinds of lives, we will live as witnesses of the fruit of the Spirit, and we won’t even have to use words. The world would look at our lives and go, OK, I’ve not acknowledged God with my life. I’ve run from God, from people who represented God that caused pain. But all of a sudden I see a light. I see someone who’s carrying light, and I see that there’s hope. There’s a confident hope no matter what the news says. And I want that. So my goal, my prayer for the church, is that we would live counter. We have never had a greater invitation to live counter — in a way that is winsome and loving — and to be part of redeeming this world.
Mental health is often a taboo topic for conversation, especially within the church. That fact in and of itself is disturbing, but it becomes even more so when you realize that mental health problems have only increased since the pandemic struck. According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 11.1% of American adults reported having anxiety or depressive disorders in 2019. By early 2021, that number had skyrocketed to 41.1%.
Clearly, this isn’t a small problem. And it’s not going away. That’s why Rebekah is so passionate about getting the church to talk about it. Having experienced the pain of mental health problems herself, Rebekah knows how hard it is to find true peace.
But thankfully, through many years of trying and failing and surrendering, she’s found that peace. Or rather, she’s discovering — and rediscovering — that peace each day with Jesus. And you can, too.
Rebekah Lyons is a national speaker and bestselling author of Rhythms of Renewal, You Are Free and Freefall to Fly. An old soul with a contemporary, honest voice, Rebekah reveals her own battles to overcome anxiety and depression — and invites others to rediscover and boldly pursue their God-given purpose from a place of freedom. Alongside her husband, Gabe, she serves as co-founder of Q Ideas, a nonprofit that helps Christian leaders winsomely engage culture. Rebekah and Gabe live in Franklin, Tennessee, with their four children.