Anxiety: intense, excessive, and persistent worry and fear about everyday situations. Fast heart rate, rapid breathing, sweating, and feeling tired may occur.
Anxiety cannot fully embrace the good in front because it is too busy bracing for the bad that must be lurking behind
Anxiety is sinking into the waters while driving over a bridge
Anxiety hears the mocking whispers of others who are not even talking
Anxiety quickly locks the door to keep things out and slowly turns around to ensure nothing got locked inside
Anxiety hides in the bathroom
Anxiety locks all the windows, and locks them again
Anxiety goes to sleep exhausted from the mental worse-case-scenario game it’s been playing all day
Anxiety wakes up exhausted from nightmares
Anxiety sighs and shrinks and shakes and sweats
It consumes
It suffocates
It paralyzes
It steals
It taunts
It lies
But the terrifying thing is it also tells the truth
The truth?
The truth is we are capable of being harmed
We do not know what is going to happen to us
Our worst fears may come to pass
And ultimately, we have no control over what happens to us
Anxiety does what anxiety can’t have
The very control it desperately chases ends up enslaving
Yet it is here, in the admitting of our limitations, that we are freed from its shackles
We find freedom, not in tackling control to the ground, but in releasing it
It is here, in the battle ground of anxiety, that we fight its own truths with its own lies
Dear brother, sister, bought by the blood of Jesus,
Anxiety is lying to you:
It does not give the protection it offers
Someone better than itself is in control
He is the one who gives peace in relentless storms
He is the one who gives joy in the deepest of sorrows
He is the one who gives light in the darkest of places
He is the one who gives strength in the weakest of moments
He does not promise us protection from all our fears,
but He promises His presence as we walk through them
His presence is the best place to be; To dwell and to land
And to launch headfirst into the unknown
The release is worth the risk when His arms are the place we get to fall
Let’s spend our time getting to know our God better than we know our anxieties.
Even if they never fully flee.
Lewisvillelife 