Anxiety and Choosing Joy

A blog post, posted directly below this one, which I wrote at a winter conference, caught the attention of some of you.  I realized that I had written it for myself, as a journal entry of sorts, but God seemed to use the struggles in my heart that I poured out to touch more people.  Let it be a testament to His goodness that someone like me could be used in His ministry. 

Let me say that sharing and being vulnerable is much easier from behind a computer screen.   I am not always so terribly open.  Writing seems to bring out that side of me; I really do feel that it is important to share some struggles, if they can encourage others. 

I thought it would only be fair to let you know more of that journey that I alluded to in my initial post and to share what the Lord is currently teaching me; we’re still on that same lesson half a year later… As it turns out, I’m a slow learner.  Spoiler alert:  I didn’t discover Sabbath rest and suddenly quit worrying.

Anxiety is real and it can be a plaguing issue.  As I mentioned in my previous blog, it is one that I have experienced my whole life, more often than I let on and more severely than I often admitted.  Despite having an incredible family, a wonderful upbringing, and friends that care about me, I could never seem to shake this feeling of discomfort and fear.  While we all worry about what others think of us, I questioned each sentence that I said. I worried that I wouldn’t be good enough.  When I was not worrying about something in particular, I still had that churning in my stomach, the about-to-jump-off-a-cliff feeling, that you should only experience before giving a public speech or are about to meet the president.  I had this feeling most of the time and I could not identify its cause.

If I am being honest, anxiousness feels like a part of who I am.  I have been told that my chemical makeup causes me to be a worrier.  I have, at many points, felt like a slave to this fact.  I have believed, at my core, that God would not relieve me from anxiety because it was a part of me.

 Eventually, God brought me to a place where I could no longer handle my nerves by my own strength.  The instance I addressed in the previous post is a prime example in what was really a series of meltdown moments that essentially brought me to my breaking point.  I decided that I could not live as a slave to my worries.  I begged for relief.

As I grew in my faith in God, I also grew in awareness of my sinful nature.  While it sounds a bit upsetting, it was in the darkness of my sin that I could see the light and goodness of God in a whole new way.  As He revealed to me the ways in which my heart was wrong, and different than His, He simultaneously revealed who He is and what His desires are.  Anxiousness had no place in the perfect plan that God had intended. Nervousness is in my chemical makeup, but only because our human sinfulness is that deep.  He wants so much more for me.  He wants more for us.  He desires for us to have peace and comfort and He waits with open arms to provide.

Providing looks differently than I had thought it might.  I thought that I would never worry again.  Although I have faith that God has the ability to completely free me from worry, so far, He has delivered me in other ways.

Providing for me has meant that God has given me the humility to seek out people who encourage and help me.  He provided those people and equipped them.  He has provided me with wonderful friends and parents who love me immensely.  He has given me bursts of self-control to say  “no” when it is necessary, so that I only agree to what I can handle.

He has given me the Holy Spirit, who lives in me after accepting Jesus into my life, to provide me with the strength to choose JOY each day, instead of fear.

He has assured me that I do not need to be a slave to my sinfulness.  He has given me a million ways out. 

“ The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.

 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.”  Romans 8:6-9

That does NOT mean that it is easy.  Sometimes, my anxiousness creeps up.  Sometimes, my worries are logical.  Thankfully, the greatest promise that God has given me is that He does not look at me as a filthy sinner.  He looks at me and sees a child of His, who has been washed clean by the blood of His son, Jesus.  He loved me enough to send Jesus to die for my sins—every worry, every stumble of my heart, every mental meltdown.  He took it all.

I still worry.  But God has been faithful.  God has provided.  He gives me the strength to wake up and choose to find joy in Him.