I have a strange relationship with worry and anxiety. I have a lot of both, but I also feel like I’ve learned to manage both fairly well. Unfortunately, I think that’s my biggest pitfall.
The moment we decide that we can work with worry and try and mitigate its symptoms, the more we grow further from God.
What I’ve learned is that, no matter how I’m feeling on any particular day, I’m so much better off just trusting my life to God. To me, the idea of turning to God in times of trial is very basic. I’ve had enough tragedy, pain and suffering in my life to learn that I don’t escape those times on my own.
The hardest thing for me to realize is that, when I have miniscule, daily worry, God still wants me to come to him.
Chapter 6 of Matthew really hammered this lesson home to me, and I love how practical this scripture is and how it logically appeals to us.
Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
— Matthew 6:26-27
Matthew 6:26-27 fills me with peace in times of worry. God created our entire world, including the birds of the air and animals of the earth. Through all of their existence, these species have survived on their own, without our interaction, because God created a place for them to live and thrive.
If he does that for a group incapable of consciousness, imagine how much more is in store for us! When we set our eyes on the kingdom of God and the words he’s spoken to us, we are blessed beyond our wildest imaginations, and our tribulations seem to vanish.
But this doesn’t come without work on our end. We still must acknowledge the omnipotence of God and trust that in our worry, in our anxiety, in our times of trouble, he is there for us — no more or less than he’s ever been, since the dawn of creation. As someone who values consistency, I’m thankful for a steadfast savior.
What a beautiful revelation that is — a truth that comes to us freely, as long as we pledge our faith to God, confess that we believe what he says is the truth, and choose to continually turn to him in moments of darkness, never attempting to carry ourselves on our own. Because when we make the choice to carry ourselves, we’ve made the choice to let worry win.
Don’t let worry win.