Over the past year, I’ve become more aware of my anxiety and its control over my life. For me, writing about it was the first step to confronting it.
I spend a lot of time being anxious about my own anxiety. So when my Sunday school teacher, Ruth, announced one day that we were going to talk about anxiety, I thought to myself, Finally.
“What is everyone worried about?” Ruth asked the class.
“College . . . where I’m going to end up,” one girl said.
The person next to her nodded. “My future in general.” I agreed; I often feel nervous about the uncertainty of the future. Sometimes, I feel like I’m entwined with this anxiety, and I let it define my identity, because without it, I wouldn’t know who I am.
My turn came. “How people perceive me?” I said, feeling unsure if I should be sharing something so personal. Immediately, I felt self-conscious. Ruth came up to me, put her hand on top of my head, and looked into my eyes. “Sarah, you are beautiful and intelligent, and I love you,” she said. My hands were trembling. I was touched, but my initial feelings of self-consciousness lingered.
All the usual anxious thoughts rushed through my head. I shouldn’t have said that. Why did I say “perceive”? I could’ve just said “see.” Now I look pretentious and they’ll all think that I think I’m smarter than them. I should’ve given the same answer as everyone else, about the future, I mean, it still would’ve been true.
“Anxiety is holding people in this very room back,” Ruth said, as if she had read my mind. I felt like her words were meant for me. Listening to her, I realized that all my life anxiety has held me back from attaining a full relationship with God—one where I can depend on him completely. My anxious thoughts have also held me back from seizing various opportunities, because fear of embarrassment and failure always overpowered anything else.
I’ve been in the Christian church my whole life and I am surrounded by faith-filled people, not only in church, but in my family as well. I’ve seen the evidence of having a strong faith in my mother’s life. In 2008, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was supposed to undergo a double mastectomy. But when the surgeons scanned her one last time, the tumor had disappeared. In the face of this scary diagnosis, she put everything in God’s hands and was calm doing so. “My God is bigger than cancer,” she said confidently. Her faith was formidable. My faith is weak in comparison. It wavers when any hint of a problem comes my way. I want to be optimistic, but it’s hard to stop imagining possible worst-case scenarios. People oftentimes use the words “joy” and “optimism” to characterize me, from friends to supervisors and teachers. However, when dwelling on negativity, there is no sight of this beloved joy. It’s stolen from me, and I can’t see myself in this same light. I become unrecognizable.
But since that day with Ruth in Sunday school, I’ve been working on it. I’ve found refuge and guidance in the Bible. Recently, I was reading the book of Romans when I came across these words: “Do not let sin control the way you live . . . Instead, give yourself completely to God . . . Sin is no longer your master.” I read the verses over and over again, replacing the word “sin” with “anxiety.” Suddenly, I could see the oppressive role of anxiety in my life. I’d made it into my master, too paralyzed by fear to stray away from it.
These verses remind me that God is my true master who has come to liberate me from my anxiety. It’s comforting to know who I belong to—a sovereign God who has infinite power over anxiety and total authority over my future.
I’m realizing that as a child of God, I must surrender the things I can’t control over to Him, having faith that He will take care of me. Instead of grounding my identity in anxiety, I’m grounding it in being a precious child under God’s perfect love.