Fear and Anxiety: A Story of Surrender

What Peter’s cry in the storm taught me about fear, faith, and the body

Fear and anxiety are two of the most misunderstood emotions we carry, and understanding the difference can change everything about how you heal. Sometimes we know immediately what the fear is underneath our anxiety. We don’t have to dig for it or journal our way to it. We just know.

When I look back on what I call one of the big “zinger” seasons of my life, that was true for me. I knew exactly why I was anxious. I knew the fear driving it. I even understood, like most of us eventually do, that anxiety is almost always fear wearing a different name.

What I didn’t understand yet was this: the circumstance causing that fear didn’t have to change for the anxiety to lift.

I kept waiting for the situation itself to resolve before I could feel steady again. But that’s not actually what Peter got, either.

Peter Saw the Wind First

This is exactly what happens to Peter in Matthew 14. Jesus is walking on the water toward the boat, and Peter, impulsive, all-in, faith-forward Peter, does something no one else does. He asks to come to Him. He steps out of the boat. He walks on water. He’s doing the actual impossible.

Then verse 30 happens:

“But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, ‘Lord, save me!'”

Notice what’s specific here. Peter didn’t get generally uneasy. He saw the wind, an identifiable, real, present trigger, and his body responded to it immediately. Fear first. Then the sinking.

And notice what he didn’t wait for. He didn’t wait for the wind to stop before he cried out. He didn’t wait until he was fully underwater, out of options, at the absolute end of himself. He cried out the moment he felt himself start to go under, while the storm was still very much happening around him.

Jesus caught him right there, in the middle of it. Scripture is specific about this: it’s not until after Peter is pulled up and they’re both back in the boat that “the wind ceased” (Matthew 14:32). The storm didn’t stop first. The rescue happened in the middle of the wind still blowing.

That’s the same shape my own season took. I brought my circumstance to God, not fixed, not resolved, still sitting there exactly as it was, and something shifted anyway. Scripture calls it “the peace that surpasses understanding,” and that’s the only way I know how to describe it. It didn’t make logical sense given what was still unresolved in my life. But it was real, and it quieted the fear enough that my nervous system finally had room to come out of survival mode.

Sleep came back. The sugar cravings I’d been reaching for all afternoon, not from hunger, but for a dopamine hit my depleted body was chasing, eased up. I had energy to move again. None of it was because my circumstances changed. It was because the fear underneath the anxiety had finally been handed over instead of carried alone.

That’s the invitation this month: like Peter, cry out before the storm resolves, not after. Get curious about whether what you’re calling anxiety is actually fear wearing a different name, and whether surrender, not circumstance-fixing, is the thing that quiets it.

Anxiety is different from fear, though, and this is a distinction most of us have never actually been taught.

Fear vs. Anxiety: The Difference That Changes Everything

Fear has an object. Anxiety often doesn’t, or rather, it has one, but we’ve stopped being able to point to it.

Fear says: the wind is picking up. It’s a response to something happening now.

Anxiety says: the wind might pick up, so I’m going to brace for it all day, every day, whether it comes or not. It’s a nervous system stuck in the “on” position, responding to a threat that’s no longer present, not yet present, or only imagined.

This is why anxiety feels so exhausting and so confusing. Your body is spending real physiological resources (cortisol, adrenaline, elevated heart rate, disrupted digestion) defending against something it can’t actually locate. You’re sinking, but you can’t point to the wind.

Almost All Anxiety Has a Fear Underneath It

This is the part most of us skip, and it’s the part that actually matters.

When you say “I’m just stressed” or “I don’t know why I feel like this,” there is very often a specific fear driving the whole thing. It’s just gotten vague enough over time that you’ve stopped being able to name it. The fear didn’t disappear. It got buried under a more socially acceptable word: busy, tired, stressed, overwhelmed.

Some of the fears I hear underneath these words, over and over, in the women I work with:

• Fear of losing control: over your health, your schedule, your body, your kids, your future.
• Fear of not being enough: as a mom, a wife, a leader, a woman of faith, in your own body.
• Fear of the unknown: waiting on test results, waiting on timing, waiting on an answer you don’t have yet.
• Fear of being alone in it: carrying real weight without anyone actually knowing how heavy it is.
• Fear rooted in something old: your body reacting to today as though it’s still that other moment, years ago, that it never fully finished processing.

You may think you’re anxious about the schedule, the bills, your child’s behavior, the number on the scale. But underneath it, there is usually a specific fear driving the reaction, and you cannot ask to be rescued from something you haven’t actually named.

Why This Matters for Your Body, Not Just Your Mindset

This isn’t just a spiritual or emotional exercise. Unnamed, unresolved fear has a real physiological cost. When your body can’t locate or resolve a threat, cortisol and adrenaline stay elevated far longer than they’re designed to. Blood flow that should be going to digestion and reproductive function gets redirected toward “survival” systems instead. Over time, this is what shows up as disrupted sleep, cycle irregularities, gut issues, stubborn weight around the midsection, and a body that feels tired no matter how much rest you get.

Your body isn’t overreacting. It’s responding exactly the way it’s designed to, to a threat you haven’t been able to name and resolve.

Naming It Is the First Act of Faith

Peter didn’t cry out, “help, everything feels like too much.” He cried out something specific: “Lord, save me.” He named the exact moment, the exact need, the exact rescue he was asking for.

That specificity matters. Vague fear keeps you stuck in survival mode, because your body doesn’t know what it’s actually defending against. Named fear, even one word, even something small, gives you (and God, and the people around you) something to actually respond to.

This week, before you call it “just anxiety” again, stop and ask yourself: what am I actually afraid of?

Not what are you stressed about. What’s the wind you’re actually looking at?

You don’t have to have it all figured out. You don’t have to solve it today. You just have to stop calling it nothing.

A Prayer to Surrender What You’re Afraid Of

If you want to try surrendering what you’re afraid of to God but aren’t sure how, try praying this:

Lord God, this situation, this fear, this anxiety, is more than I can carry on my own. I ask you to come into my life and walk with me in this burden. I trust you as my Savior to walk with me in and through this fear. Amen.

This is what we’re unpacking this month inside Nourish, my women’s health community: not fear and anxiety as a spiritual weakness, but as something with a real, physical impact on your hormones, your gut, your sleep, and your energy. If you want to walk through the rest of this month with us (naming the fear, understanding what it’s doing to your body, and learning to recognize it long before you’re sinking), join us inside Nourish. Your first two weeks are free! Click here!