I have struggled with anxiety most of my life. My name is Tony Barlow and I attend the Haslet Campus.

I was married for seven years. I had a wonderful wife and a great stepson. I had a job that provided for my family really well, a job that I was great at. I was miserable. Most of it didn’t make sense. Anxiety kind of does a crazy thing to you. It tells you a story that’s not true and you make decisions based on that.

I attended the NFW Campus for about seven years, but I sat in the back, in the very, very back. One of my biggest fears was that the people at the front door would shake my hand and I would have to shake their hand back. I dreaded the part where we would stand up and say hi to somebody.

I moved to Montana, which is probably not the best idea when your family

can’t move with you. My now ex-wife and I talked one day, and she said she wanted to be by herself. I did not see that coming. I was not in a good place or state of mind. I yelled at God as loud as I could and told Him I hated Him.

The weirdest thing happened that I still don’t understand. I could see all the times when He had tried to help me, and I literally discounted it and didn’t pay attention. I don’t think I wanted to end my life, but I knew I didn’t want to live like that anymore.

I told God that I would do whatever He wanted me to do, as long as I didn’t have to live like this anymore. I’ve always been a believer but never was a

follower.

I called people I hadn't talked to for twenty years and I ended up doing

things that I previously would have discounted. The guy who didn’t want

to talk to anybody actually stands out front and greets people at the Haslet Campus.

Even though I had been going to church off and on for seven years, I

decided to participate in the Starting Point class. I also joined the Better

Man Small Group. I thought that was a good title for someone like me. I

connected with a group of guys who support and help each other. One of

the things they ask us to do is sit at the same table each week. I think that six or seven of us have now all been baptized.

It’s been a big change. I’m hoping that if someone else is struggling with

their mental health, even though it’s not easy to talk about it, they will fifind somebody to ask for help.

Phil: We got married a little later in life. We were both in our early 30’s.

After we had been married for a few years, we started trying to have children.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t necessarily working out for us.

Brandon: We always knew in the back of our minds that adoption was an

option for us. After trying for several months and undergoing some tests,

we started talking about adopting. It ran the gamut from do we adopt

internationally or domestically? Do we do foster to adopt?

Phil: When there are big decisions in our lives, we always seem to be on the same page. The little choices are where we tend to be in different spots. We attended an adoption information meeting and there we learned about some of the different countries that were available. Russia ended up being the one that just seemed to fit well for us.

Brandon: We chose Gladney as our adoption agency. They were wonderful to work with. They hosted events for families who have adopted as well as families who are in the process of adopting. We went to one of these events, a family picnic. It was us and all these families who had adopted and their kids. The day after that picnic, we got a call from Gladney saying we had been matched with a little girl in Russia.

Phil: I was at work that day. Brandon got the call at home, and she called me at the offifice. I was getting ready to get on a conference call. Then she called my mobile phone right after that and I immediately was thinking it was an emergency. As I pick up the phone, she starts talking so fast – “That was our adoption agency, we’ve been matched with a little girl in Russia, and we have to be in Moscow in a week!” Immediately, because I work in travel, my first thought wasn’t “Wow -we’re getting ready to go on this adoption journey.” It was “Wow – plane tickets are going to be really expensive.”

Brandon: And how are we going to get a VISA in fifive days?

Phil: We tell people it was a journey of planes, trains, and automobiles.  We flew a couple of days later to Moscow. We then took an overnight train ride to the state where Alina is from. From there, we took a 2 ½ hour taxi ride in a tiny car to the small town where the baby house where Alina was.

When we got to the baby house, a couple of nurses came in with Alina and handed her to Brandon. They then handed her to me. While I was holding her, they were pointing at me and at Alina and kind of laughing. I looked over at our translator while also laughing along with them. Since they were speaking in Russian, we didn’t have any idea what they were saying. Our translator told us that they wanted to know if it was my fifirst time in Russia because the baby looked just like me.

We then had to go home without her. That was crushing. We waited a couple of months, and we went back to go to court. That’s where we had to stand before and talk in front of a Russian judge and explain why we would be good parents for Alina. That was overwhelming and we again had to leave her and go home for about a week. We went back a third time to bring her home.

Brandon: September 10, 2008, is our Gotcha Day, the day we became a

forever family.

Phil: We walked alongside people who were going through similar journeys that we had. They were questioning how they wanted to become a family and if adoption was right for them. Those journeys for families are so personal you never really want to say one way or the other or sway anyone. You don’t want to try and push one thing over another. So, really what I landed on was to tell people why we went to Russia. It’s because that’s where our daughter lived.

Worship is what sustained me and allowed me to connect with God.

My name is Jessica Bennett, and I have the honor and privilege of being

the worship leader at our Fellowship of the Parks (FOTP) Bedford campus.

Even at an early age, going to church was important to my family. All my

family were in music, and I even started singing in church when I was four years old. I quickly fifigured out that music and worship were going to be a big part of my life forever.

What I struggled with when I was young was an immense amount of

stage fright and performance anxiety. In elementary school, I questioned

that a lot. I remember just saying, "Why’?" I love music, I love how I can

see that music connects us and brings joy, and yet I am afraid.

I would get physically ill. I would go to the point of almost blacking out.

It was hard. I felt like God was not letting go of me. It was not like He was

saying, “Okay, just stop that plan.” I knew that God had given me this

passion, and I knew that I had skilled ability, but this was no good. It

wasn’t going to work for me to keep letting this fear control me.

A professor in college once told me to try performing in theme parks. He

said that you do fifive to six shows a day, six days a week and that it might help get rid of this fear.

So that is what I did. I started performing at a theme park. I met my

husband at a theme park, and we also performed on cruise ships for a

while. I had every opportunity to get rid of the fear inside of me.

Then we had our fifirst baby and decided we did not want to raise her in

a green room on a cruise ship somewhere. I had always voluntarily led

worship as well and I knew God was saying: this is what I want for your life.

I pushed against it at fifirst. I kept telling God I would just keep performing

and tell everyone about God backstage. He just kept leading me and

opening doors to be in full-time ministry.

Early on in my time in ministry, when I was still having the fear, and going

through obstacles in our lives and in our marriage, I felt God’s strength

through each step. Worship is what sustained me. One particular day, I

was on stage praying right before worship began. I had a lot of anxiety

and God clearly reminded me: the strength does not come from myself—

it comes from Him. I needed to give it all to Him. He gave me this

opportunity so I would rely completely on Him.

Do not lose hope in what God is doing even in the times you feel

inadequate or afraid. He is going to do what only He can do. We just

worship through it all and He brings us through it.

He will be honored through it if we just surrender to Him.