Post 19: …but God
December 27, 2023
Everyone faces anxiety in different calibers and ways, and whether you’ve minimally or exponentially felt it, I think we can all agree that anxiety fucking sucks. There’s anxiety about walking into a party, the lunchroom, or a grocery store. Then there’s the more debilitating kind. The kind that really sticks with you, halts life’s courses, and manifests deep inside. The kind that sends us into a genuine and very real panic for multiple reasons, or sometimes, no reason at all. Anxiety is like a parasite that occasionally flares up. What triggers it? Good luck finding out. It demands to be seen and heard and it doesn’t seem to go away without acknowledgement. It’s haunting and exhausting and discouraging. And it sucks.
Anxiety is the literal Devil.
I recently heard a sermon, and I’ve been hesitant to write about it, because I know it’s nearly impossible to emulate the emotion I felt, but here it goes.
The “sermon” (which wasn’t even a proper sermon because it was during a short worship-centered service) focused on letting go of anxieties. I also think it’s worth noting this was my first time ever attending this church. The pastor spoke on an anxious season he had been facing, and how he inevitably came to the realization that he would have to surrender his anxieties to God to live the life he intended, and when he did, he felt so at peace. He went on to make points about how prideful we are to even have anxieties. Who are we to think we can take care of ourselves better than God can? By not casting our anxieties and worries on God, we are essentially saying that we can take care of it better than He can.
Later, the senior pastor asked everyone to release their anxieties to God. He said he saw years-long anxieties leaving people. And while I generally don’t find much merit in statements like this, I really believed him. I felt God. And I felt like myself. It’s like I finally believed in the power of God, or like I finally realized I didn’t have to be this anxiety-ridden shell of a human being. I could LIVE and find true LIFE in Jesus. And while I’ve logically known this for a long time, I think this was a pivotal moment in me actually implementing it. I think too often people think it’s silly or weird to be moved in church, and then to take it a step further and take that movement with them/out the doors of the church. Why do we feel this way?
Anxiety has turned me into a person I don’t like. A person I genuinely lost recognition of. And I think society has romanticized anxiety. Although my journey with it will likely be lifelong, I’ve realized I don’t have to identify with it. It’s okay for it to be a part of myself, but I don’t have to make it my life. I don’t have to let it steal the good parts of me away. I can acknowledge it’s a feeling rushing around my body and still go about my life. You can do it anxious.
Similar to my post about becoming comfortable in our sadness, I think that sometimes it can be easier to accept anxiety rather than actually face it. But I have done this for way too long. And I’m so (SO) done. Life is way too short.
God is more powerful than ANYTHING. The title of this post, “…but God,” Is something I thought about getting tattooed for a long time. It basically means that any worry or fear you have, you can respond to it with, “Okay…but God.” He is bigger than anything we will ever face. He lives in us and loves us. I’m in awe of God’s glory. His love overwhelms me and what a GOOD feeling that is!!
Anything that pulls us away from God, like anxiety, is not from God. It’s from Satan. And if the desire to resist Satan isn’t the biggest motivator of all, I don’t know what is.
whyiscchappy? The power of my Risen Saviour, Jesus Christ. Praise be to God, FOREVER! And going to that church service.