by: Sara Billups

• Format

  Paperback

  ISBN

  9781540904218

  Dimensions

  5.5 x 8.5

  Pub. Date

  Nov 2025

  SRP

  $19.99

  Carton Quantity

  30

  Number of pages

  240

  Buy

About

Every era has its challenges, but ours seem to be majoring in anxiety. Bombarded (via screens) by constant global conflicts, rancorous politics, and church scandals, today we endure seemingly endless external stressors. The reasons are easy to find--division in politics and the pews, caring for kids or aging parents, and the rapid impact of social media on our psyches, to name a few. While exploring these origins may hold some benefit, Sara Billups is concerned with right now: How do we live well in the presence of pervasive personal and collective anxiety?

The dissonance between Jesus saying "Do not worry" and her heart's inability to stop worrying led Sara to seek out spiritual rhythms and practices that create a holistic, holy response to the anxiety brimming in our bodies, our churches, and our society.

Nervous Systems offers helpful, doable daily practices for anxiety in the large and small trials in our lives. This collection of personal and cultural observations invites us to let go in the presence of our anxiety. Join Sara in learning how, with God's help, to face anxiety head-on rather than trying to pray it away or, worse, grin and bear it.

Endorsements

"Nervous Systems is a special book, marked both by prophetic courage and generous compassion. Sara Billups masterfully takes her reader by the hand and honors the deep complexity of what it means to be human and follow Jesus in a world like ours. This is a thoughtful, challenging, and hopeful read."

Aundi Kolber, MA, LPC, therapist and author of Try Softer and Strong like Water

"I recently heard friend and trauma therapist Ryan Kuja say that the autonomic nervous system has two basic functions: to protect and to connect. And I remember thinking how often those roles seem to be at odds. How often we crave peace and belonging but find only war within ourselves.

Through thoughtful inquiry and prose you can taste, Sara Billups invites us to attune to the individual and collective anxiety we carry beneath the skin and to enlarge our communal imagination for how protection and connection can waltz together, in their own clunky but compelling kind of way.

For all of us who have been holding our breath, anxious about what we might lose in the exhale, Nervous Systems invites us to be settled. This book is deeply human, generous, relevant to our current moment, and thrumming with possibility for we who crave peace in our veins, not someday but here and now."

Sarah Westfall, author of The Way of Belonging

"An extraordinary--and extraordinarily wide-ranging--tour through the valleys of anxiety that shape so much of modern life, Nervous Systems brims with rare candor, wisdom, and humor. So practical too! Billups makes for an ideal guide for thorny terrain: open yet anchored, humble yet unafraid to interrogate uncomfortable truths about herself and others. The result is a book that exudes not just insight and courage but grace. The sparkling prose doesn't hurt either. I loved it."

David Zahl, author of Low Anthropology and The Big Relief

"Nervous Systems is a one-of-a-kind book that the church desperately needs right now. With ancient, sacramental wisdom, Sara Billups delivers a hope-filled perspective on modern anxieties many of us find ourselves wrestling with. This book is pure prophetic poetry!"

Rev. Joash P. Thomas, author of The Justice of Jesus

"Perhaps we're living through the most anxious time in the world's history. So many of us experience daily overwhelm in our bodies, in the Christian church, and in the political forces in our lives. This is a book for the anxious ones, a companion for all of us who long for sturdy faith amid our teetering minds, disconnected bodies, or frazzled sense of the world's dangers. Sara Billups writes that even when her anxiety refused to dissipate, 'God met [her] repeatedly in its very presence.' Who better than Sara to guide us toward faith that flourishes alongside our collective and personal unease?"

Micha Boyett, author of Blessed Are the Rest of Us

"Sara's writing is poetic and honest, naming the lived experiences of so many. She creatively addresses the topic of anxiety and manages to write about it in a way that leaves the reader feeling hopeful, offering practical tools and perspectives. Nervous Systems feels like a helpful peek into the lives of so many who find themselves in an in-between space, including everyday Christians, not just the ones we see represented in the media. Sara writes with such vulnerability, talking about her own experiences with anxiety, caring for aging parents, parenting, and grappling with what it is to be a follower of Jesus in our current cultural context. Nervous Systems explores things we all grapple with, and as I read it, I couldn't help but think of people I pastor and friends, Christian and non, who will immensely benefit from the timeliness of Sara's words; I can't wait to get it in their hands."

Kimberly Deckel, priest, pastor, and social worker