What the Holy Spirit and Your Nervous System Have in Common
Why so many of us struggle to feel the peace we genuinely believe is available to us.
Originally published in 2025. Revisited and revised in 2026 as part of the Treasure MaDonna Archive. A collection of essays that trace the evolution of my thinking on faith, restoration, emotional capacity, and living well in a demanding world.
For a long time, I thought peace was something I was supposed to arrive at through faith alone.
If I trusted God enough, prayed enough, surrendered enough, then peace would naturally follow.
Yet there were seasons when I knew all the right things and still felt overwhelmed.
I believed God was faithful.
I believed I was loved.
I believed I was being guided.
And yet my shoulders were tight.
My thoughts raced ahead of me.
My body felt like it was preparing for something that wasn’t happening.
For years, I quietly interpreted this as a spiritual problem.
If peace was available to me, why couldn’t I feel it?
I know I’m not alone in that question.
There are people with deep faith who still struggle with anxiety.
People who pray and still feel exhausted.
People who trust God and still carry more tension than they realize.
For a long time, I assumed the gap between what we believe and what we experience was a failure of faith.
Now I wonder if something else is happening.
What if knowing something is true is not always the same as feeling it?
What if peace can be present long before we’re able to receive it?
The nervous system is constantly asking a simple question:
Am I safe?
Not spiritually.
Not philosophically.
Practically.
In this moment, am I safe?
Can I soften?
Can I remain open?
Can I rest?
When the answer is yes, we tend to feel more present, connected, grounded, and available to life.
When the answer is no, we brace.
We protect.
We prepare.
Many of us have lived this way for so long that we mistake it for normal.
We become so accustomed to tension that we mistake it for responsibility.
So accustomed to vigilance that we mistake it for wisdom.
So accustomed to carrying everything that we forget what it feels like to be carried.
I don’t think we were created to live in a perpetual state of readiness.
And this is where I see a beautiful parallel between the nervous system and the Holy Spirit.
Both operate beneath the surface.
Neither shouts.
Neither forces.
Both invite us to pay attention.
The nervous system helps us recognize what we are experiencing.
The Holy Spirit helps us remember what is true.
One tells us what is happening.
The other reminds us we are not alone within it.
One helps us notice what we’re carrying.
The other reminds us we were never meant to carry it alone.
Sometimes we think we’re struggling to hear God when we’re actually struggling to slow down enough to listen.
Sometimes we think we’ve lost peace when we’ve simply lost connection with ourselves.
And sometimes what looks like a spiritual problem is also a human one.
A tired body.
An overwhelmed mind.
A nervous system that has been holding too much for too long.
For years, I thought peace was something I needed to achieve.
Now I wonder if peace is something we learn to receive.
Not because it wasn’t already available.
Not because God was withholding it.
But because receiving requires a different posture than striving.
The promise of peace has always been there.
The question is whether we have the capacity to receive it.
I don’t think the goal is to become perfectly regulated.
I don’t think the goal is to eliminate every anxious thought or difficult emotion.
I think the goal is to create enough internal space to recognize that we are already held.
To stop treating our bodies as obstacles to overcome and begin seeing them as part of the conversation.
Perhaps the nervous system and the Holy Spirit are not competing for our attention.
Perhaps both are inviting us home.
Not to a life without struggle.
Not to a life without fear.
But to a life where being held becomes more familiar than holding everything together.
