Goodbye, Anxiety

Anxiety. The word that surfaces throughout social media lately. I know it very well. It is one of the issues that I deal with. When it hits, you can probably find me making a video, writing, or my favorite thing, taking a drive through the country. But may I say that anxiety is not who you are? I want you to believe it if you particularly struggle with anxiety. Anxiety does not own you, and anxiety does not control you. Anxiety is a combination of fear and worry all of which can be defeated. How do I know? I did the work.

There were people who told me that I should go on medicine to resolve my anxiety. However, I did not because I did not want a get-me-out-of-jail-free-card. If the Lord can heal like He promises too, then I for certain knew He could help me resolve this with His help. PAUSE. His help? Yes, the dangerous four-letter word to say to God. Brace yourself if you dare because it requires work on your part.

The first thing I learned about anxiety is that it is natural, and flare ups occur because of a “trigger” that has happened in your life. The word that may have popped up at you is “natural”. How so? Let us look at scripture. Proverbs 12:25 states “An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up” or Psalms 34:4 “I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears”. Oh, and what about the well-known verses in Philippians 4:6-7 which says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”. Point made: God always provides a way out.

I remember asking God a few years back why do I react the way that I do? Why am I experiencing anxiety in this situation? Funny thing is, God answered me probably because I wanted to finally get to the root of it and deal with this word “anxiety”. He said to me: “Christy, you have a trigger.” In my nice but sassy, feisty voice, I came back with: What do you mean a trigger? It was then and there that he gave me a flashback on things that have happened to me in my past that still had a strong-hold over me. As I stated before, anxiety has triggers.

Here are my triggers: my father passed away when I was two which led me to feel abandoned. My grams decided to move back to Tennessee until her time was up on earth which led me to feel abandoned. The top trigger was due to a guy I fell in love with back in high school who was unfaithful and left me for another woman on Valentine’s day without telling me we were over. Again, can you guess it? I felt abandoned. My anxiety was only popping up to feelings of abandonment. This led to open a door of feelings of rejection. So now let us add rejection as a trigger to my anxiety.

My anxiety was due to those listed scenarios that happened in my life. To combat it, God taught me to pray, meditate on scripture, or put on worship music and sing to it. Why sing? When you sing praises to the Lord, the enemy has no foothold. The enemy cannot stand it! I also had to bring my whole heart to the table for God. I had to release my anxiety to Him. What do I mean? Have you ever noticed that when you are going through something internally that you usually keep it to yourself and you just dwell on it in your mind? I am laughing right now because that is me to a tee. You must not do that! Find a quiet place and tell God with your voice what is going on and just talk to him about it.

I found that when I opened my mouth and released it to him a weight came off me. See, the enemy wants to keep you quiet so that you are always dwelling and thinking of things that are not of God. God wants you to come to him with everything: the good and the bad because he loves you and wants you in his life. He wants to take away the anxiousness and replace it with his peace. We must first release it to him.  Again, requires work on our part.