The answer to anxiety
May 04, 2020My daughter walked into my home office with her latest creation, a homemade caramel iced latte from our kitchen coffee pot, the basic one not the one with all those fancy pods. Beaming with pride she sipped on this sweetness and described how she cracked the recipe code: just the right amount of syrup, and coffee, and milk. How the whipped cream and chocolate drizzle mimicked the one from the boutique coffee shop down the street.
In her excitement I noticed something... her hands were shaky, and so were her feet.
After celebrating with her for finally finding the perfect ratio I grinned and said, "I think your missing one thing."
She looked at me curiously as to what could be missing from this decadence her lips slurped through the straw.
“Your breakfast. You're wobbly and that tells me you didn’t eat.“
"Oh? yeah." She laughed.
We walked back to the kitchen together and I made her scrambled eggs and toast.
I’ve been there too, when the caffeine hit my bloodstream and made me all jittery.
And often the answer is to get something to eat.
This seems so obvious to us, yet when we are faced with jitters of a different kind we don’t know what to do about THAT anxiety. Those jitters.
We wrestle with the ‘what if’s” letting them stir up scenarios and umpteenth options of how it could go - this way or that. Some good, mostly bad.
Our mind becomes a playground for the worst possible outcome and we can quickly spiral down into a pit of paralysis.
We won’t do whatever it is because of 'what could happen'. What hasn’t happened yet has trapped us.
Now we’re captive to the uncertainty and frozen in fear.
I remember the day I lost my job... facing bills and wondering how we were going to pay them. I’ve walked alongside friends who experienced the reality of bankruptcies.
Finances are real.
Math is real and the money either adds up or it doesn’t.
I remember having to get up every day and tell my kids it is going to be ok.
And I remember the moment God interrupted my anxieties to ask me...
"Cherlyn, do I still have you?"
It came down to trust. I either trust God or I don’t.
He is either faithful to his Word or he isn’t.
He either will provide or he won’t.
What did I believe? What did he promise?
Because until I know what he promises I can’t rely on his word.
Let me pose to you the answer to the anxiety and the fix for the coffee jitters is the same. FOOD.
Yep.
It’s just the type of food that is different.
Jesus tells us we need our daily bread. He tells us He is the bread of life. God is the source of our strength. We cannot handle the anxieties of life without the Word of God to sustain us.
If we try to do it without God we’ll be wobbly, like our bodies are when we have coffee on an empty stomach.
The answer is the WORD.
We need to know what God says about us and our current situation. And that is found in the Word.
We can be equipped to handle what life throws at us when we are feasting on the word.
Get into the Word.
To our ‘what if’s’ God says, "I’ve got you in the palm of my hand".
To our anxiety, he says to "cast them on me... I’ll take them." We can picture taking what is heavy to us and putting it on his shoulders. Let him have it. And trust that he has got you. He has got me.
Can we see the outcome? Nope, not usually. But God can; and he has us no matter what.
We trade our uncertainty for his certainty.
We trade our instability for his stability.
We trade our doubts for his dependability.
We rest our anxiety on his answer.
We trade our crisis for his character.
We trade our jitters for Jesus.
You know in these times of crisis anxiety can be at an all-time high and we can freeze up..so now is the time to learn what the Word of God says about your current circumstances and declare it out loud.
When you feel the 'what if’s' taking over, then the actions you take can either:
1) cause your faith in God to rise up, sustain you in this crisis, and quiet your anxiety or
2) choose to walk around all jittery and wobbly, letting the unknown eat you up inside.
Your actions decide.
Declare the word...and if you don’t know where to get started here are the ones I use:
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