I Struggle With Anxiety

His cheeks were red, his brilliant, hazel eyes were laughing, and the chill of the
snow was radiating from his entire being. He was wearing winter from head to toe.

"Hurry! Put on your shoes and coat! It's glorious!
Go stand out there in the falling snow and talk to God!"

I just blinked at my husband, "are you for real?"

Child-like excitement buzzed in my chest as I slipped on my boots, mittens, scarf
to go play in the snow with it's Maker; to go BE, to go EXPERIENCE, something other than

myself.

I am my own worst enemy. Have been for as long as I can remember. The voices spin webs
of confusion, fear - and before I know it I've worked myself into an imaginary, sometimes not,
crisis situation. Panic. A struggle to breathe. Just breathe.

I romped through the snow, softly singing, "let it rain down... open the flood gates of heaven,"
as fluffy white flurries rushed to kiss away the tear drops frosting on my cheeks. Sometimes you can
just feel God. Sometimes He just shows up in radiant glory and says, "Hey, I've got you."

Those are crushing words to someone who tells herself, "I've got myself". Day after day, month
after month, year after year; thousands of minutes spent on a messed up theology. "Bless me, Father,
for I have sinned..." I've been holding it together all my life because I bought the lie from a dirty
dealing demon that if I fall apart, my world will go up in a puff of smoke. To hell with it.

"Do you pray?" someone asked me this week.
"Yes," I replied - a little confused as to how this applied to my visit with the allergist.
"Fox hole prayers. In and out. Lip service. Never long enough to let Him change you," he chimed.
I could feel my eyebrows begin to furrow and a lump of "he's right" come up into my throat.

The next day I walked into a counselor's office for the first time in my life.
"Why don't you trust God?" "What happens if YOU let go?" "Things are out of YOUR control and
THAT freaks you out." I just stared back at him, trying to keep eye contact in my guilt, feeling
overwhelmed by the truth of the matter, the core of my heart.

And I feel God pull back another layer, stoke the fire, and order a deeper refinement this time.
Gold. We are all meant to be pure gold.

I told my husband that I've been read like a book twice this week.
I thought I was more mysterious than that, but apparently not. Must work on that.

"I am anxious and worried," has fallen from my lips one too many times in the past few months.
Today I was challenged to say instead, "I am prayerful and active." Anxiety, has no place here.
Children of God are not children of darkness, but of light. Even in the darkest night, the enemy has no
place unless we give it to him.

This is a process. Life in general, I suppose. We all have "things".
But I think the trick to surviving this valley of tears is to truly realize once and for all
that there is a God and all of "it" - all the "things" - is the great RESCUE plan to pull us into Eternity.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms;
if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and
prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
You know the way to the place where I am going.” - John 14:1-4