The following is an excerpt from the book Serenity in the Storm: Living Through Chaos by Leaning on Christ, written by Kayleigh McEnany, a Fox News co-host and a former White House Press Secretary.

From Fox News. As a young girl, I walked down the aisle of my Southern Baptist church and gave my life to Christ. That Sunday evening, I knelt beside my bed with my father and acknowledged my sins, professed my belief in Christ, and committed my life to Him. In that moment, I know that I became a Christian.

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As a teenager, I was devoted to my faith. I prayed by my bedside and regularly journaled to my savior. I became inspired by Rachel Joy Scott, the first victim of the Columbine shooting, who was a young woman of great faith. Rachel regularly wrote journals to Christ, and they were published in the aftermath of her death. She spoke to God like she was talking to a friend, and her conversations with her Savior showed a remarkable premonition of her death. On May 2, 1998, she wrote these words: “This will be my last Lord, I have gotten what I can, thank you.” Less than a year later, on April 20, 1999, Rachel was killed in the Columbine High School shooting. …

Rachel’s story has changed countless hearts, including mine. I learned, through Rachel, that God could be as much a friend and a partner in life as He is a father.

After college, I moved to New York City to take a job as a production assistant with the show “Huckabee” at Fox News.

I lived alone in an apartment in Manhattan, and I discovered a city that was much different than my home state of Florida. I attended The Journey church in New York one Sunday, and I remember the pastor saying that even though New York City is full of millions of people, it can feel like one of the loneliest places. He was right.

At one point during my three years in the city, I remember feeling so lonely. I left work and went back to my small, basically windowless apartment. … I laid in my bed and prayed to God: “If you’re out there, I need to hear from you right now.” I kid you not. In that very moment, my phone lit up. It was a number I didn’t recognize with a New York area code. And while I typically don’t pick up numbers I don’t know, in that moment, I was happy to talk to anyone — even a telemarketer!

I answered the phone, “Hello.”

I will never forget the first words that I heard in reply: “Hi Kayleigh. This is The Journey church. How can we pray for you today?”

Completely stunned, I sat in silence for a moment before replying to The Journey churchgoer who had decided to call me in that moment. After speaking with them briefly, I hung up the phone and began to cry tears of joy. I knew, without a doubt, I had just had a divine moment of outreach from the risen Savior.

I do not know who it was that called my phone that day. I don’t even remember if the caller was a man or a woman, but I do know that person was used by Christ in that specific moment. …

It occurred to me a few months ago that I have had a few life-defining calls. I wrote about two of them in my last book.

There was the call I received at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. I was riding in the car with my mom and my daughter, just a few months old, when I received a call from the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, asking me to be the White House press secretary. It was a call that defined my career.

Then, there was the call I got on Christmas Eve during my senior year of college. It was an unwanted and emotional call from my doctor informing me that I had tested positive for the BRCA2 genetic mutation, which as I noted earlier in this book put me at about an 84 percent chance of breast cancer and 27 percent chance of ovarian cancer over my lifetime. …

But then there was that call from The Journey church, more important and consequential in my life than a call from the president of the United States or a call with life-changing medical news from my health care provider.

For it was a call, through a human being, sent directly from my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I can say, without hesitation, that call changed my life, taking my Christian faith from my head to my heart, where it will live forever.

As I was writing this book, and as I considered what it means to have serenity in the storm, one New Testament anecdote about the life of Jesus stood out to me. It is recounted in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John.

In Matthew 14, we learn about one of the great miracles of Jesus. With just five loaves of bread and two fish, Jesus fed a crowd of about five thousand people. After this miracle, as Jesus dismissed the multitudes, He told his disciples to “get into the boat and go before him to the other side” of the sea to Capernaum while Jesus “went up on the mountain by himself to pray.”

By evening, the disciples were “a long way from the land,” and the boat was “beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them.” But then something happened during “the fourth watch of the night,” which the Jeremiah Study Bible (JSB) says was “between 3 and 6 AM.” At this time, “[H]e came to them, walking on the sea.” …

According to the JSB, this means that the disciples were alone in the boat, where they were eventually thrashed by the waves, likely for hours!

The JSB then asks an important question and provides an enlightening answer. “Why did Jesus allow His followers to struggle in isolation for seven or eight hours?” The JSB continues, “If He had rescued them immediately, the disciples might have forgotten His intervention or perhaps assumed that, given enough time, they could have saved themselves. The Lord sometimes waits until His followers have exhausted their resources before He steps in.”

And when He did step in, one disciple, Peter, stepped out in faith — at least for a moment. When Jesus told his followers not to be afraid, Peter responded, “‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’” Jesus replied, “‘Come,’” prompting Peter to step out in faith onto the water.” …

Peter’s actions demonstrated a remarkable level of faith, stepping onto the roaring waters on the verge of consuming his vessel. But his faith only lasted a moment because he took his eyes away from Christ and looked instead to the thrashing waves. In that moment, Peter looked at the storm and not at the savior. And that is only human.

As an innate worrier, I find myself doing just the same. There is a tendency in us all to focus on and sometimes get lost in the storms of life. Indeed, sometimes the storm may be more like an all-consuming, life-threatening hurricane that we cannot escape.

But rest assured that we find the answers to the treacherous waters in life and the unexplainable weather patterns that can ravage us in the person of Christ Jesus. …

Only here — only in Him — will you find serenity in the storm.

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(Excerpt from Fox News. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America – Kayleigh McEnany, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia)