How to Live Anxiously

Life rarely turns out how we imagine. Being in my forties, Lord willing, I am only maybe halfway through my journey in this life. If someone had told my 20 year old self where she’d be now, she woulda laughed in your face. Mostly because she tends to deal with fear with humor. But she certainly did not see this life coming a mile away.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.

This truth lives on the tip of my tongue and edge of my brain. I typed it out here without looking it up because this truth is oxygen to me.

As an enneagram 6 and one who twirls needless thoughts in my mind until they keep me up at night, I need a Truth to replace the twirling when the knots tighten and my brain needs a break. How to live anxiously is what I know, and know well. To live with a brain that, left to itself, chews on a thought like a dog chews a bone, is not easy but it’s easy to fall into.

First you have to trust in yourself. Think and rethink how you are the one that can make or break every situation. How you can hold together all the things you hold dear. Smothering might do it for a time but eventually that puppy wants free. (not sure why all the dog references) So you begin to trust only yourself with all your weary, divided heart, since you are the only trustworthy one. But are you even trustworthy? Did you see the mess you made in the last situation? Have you forgotten so quickly?

Then you must put the weight of your thoughts on your own understanding. You understand what you see and what you can’t see, right? You can lean hard on that toothpick of understanding, surely it can hold your weight. Besides if you are only trusting yourself and your limited understanding then you can figure out anything that comes your way since you will be up neurotically pacing the floor tonight anyway.

Finally, in all your ways you can acknowledge yourself, recognize how you figured it out and then even pat yourself on the back in the moments you think you figured it out. This only proves to make you lean harder on the shaky toothpick until it snaps and you realize you can’t even make the dawn come at your beckon.

I lived years in the cycle of this nonsense, that didn’t ever seem ridiculous. Neurotic but real, yes. Ridiculous, no.

It wasn’t until I tattooed Proverbs 3:5-6 to the inside of my brain and actually repeated it enough times to myself (surely it’s been no less than ten thousand, this week), that I began the slow walk towards a peaceful mind.

Now I consider the ways I can trust the Lord; He has certainly met me at every step on this invisible bridge of life. In that pondering, my heart is wrangled into focus and forced into it’s bullpen. The lies I was gnawing fall away as I begin to acknowledge and really know God in every situation. He is the One who loves me most and the One in full view of my future and the only sure guarantee I have in this life, for however many more days He gives me.