How To Let Go Of 'Anxious Care'
That pit in my stomach, the weight on my chest, waking up with an ache between my shoulders, tired before the day begins—
I know too well what it means to wrestle with worry.
I’m behind on… everything. My closets need Kondo-ing and my fridge is frightening. A deadline looms and all I’ve done is not enough.
Or worse: Someone’s mad at me and I don’t know how to fix it.
And don’t get me started on all my inadequacies as a mother. Or as a wife. “The rule of kindness is on her tongue”? Ha! More like the rule of irritated, one-straw-away-from-a-broken-camel-back shrew-ness.
Oh yeah, that’s me wrapped in my world of worry.
And… I’m probably the lamest, most absentee friend in the world.
What’s wrong with me??!
And suddenly I see a pattern:
My worry is all about me— again.
I’ve been here so many times, over and over— my go-to response to normal life. My soul seems to have ruts that pull the wheels of my burdens deeper into the muck.
Until all of a sudden I notice where I’m headed. And that nasty Proverb comes to mind: “As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly” (Proverbs 26:11).
Yuck.
By now, after all these years of wrestling with worry, I know exactly where to head with my load of anxious care. And I’m hoping that— if you’re anything like me— the solution that works every time for me, will help you too.
I turn to the hard earned wisdom of Peter. Not exactly a paragon of peace-filled living, Peter worried incessantly— and did what all the rest of us try to do— he attempted to drown his anxious thoughts in impulsive, feels-right-in-the-moment solutions. And sank.
Here’s what Peter learned and what I’m learning:
“You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, for you are his personal concern.”
Oh! It gets me every time. Down deep my battered soul rises at this truth I hardly dare believe.
I am His personal concern.
How can I fret and worry and demand my own way when I am His personal concern?
And there’s more to it than that but the beauty of this is enough to leave with you for right now.
Wrap yourself in the wonder of what you’ll never fully grasp. Let your worries fall from your weary shoulders and rest a while in this kind of love.
Sink your soul into the bliss of being God’s personal concern.
From my heart,
Diane
P.S. I’d love to hear how this word from God’s Word makes you feel. Yes- feelings do matter! More than any of us know. And maybe I just need to hear that the truths that make me feel alive and free do the same for you.