Chill. I think you need to relax.

It’s because you find yourself in knots way too frequently. On really bad days, you can’t even suck in a decent breath. You have this sense of constriction, of the world closing in on you.

This is unpleasant (see my gift of understatement working here?)

Temperamentally, I’m not given to anxiety. Depression, well, yeah. But to spend my days bent out of shape? Nope. I just don’t find that much to get all agitated about.

I’ll tell you what is my kryptonite is along these lines. I feel that there are way too many times when I’ve wandered away from God. It isn’t that I’ve turned my back on the faith. Nothing like that. It’s rather an aimless drift, a sense of anchorlessness, of knowing where I should be and what I should be doing, and knowing that I’m not there.

I’m I hard on myself? Oh heck yeah. I can’t bear the thought of God being disappointed in me. I don’t want to let Him down. I want to please Him, because He’s daddy.

How about you? What’s your kryptonite?

• You second guess your motives and your actions, wondering in hindsight if you handled situations right.
• You have this sense of aimlessness.
• You wonder if you’re fulfilling your purpose in life.
• Heck, you’re trying to figure out what your purpose is.
• You feel indecisive and wishy-washy.
• You wonder if you’re adequately meeting the needs of those you care about.
• You can’t focus or stay on task because you’re afraid of failure.

If you’re a person of faith, then these issues are even more acute. After all, you are supposed to be standing on the Solid Rock. You’re supposed to be steadfast and unwavering. You absolutely shouldn’t be stressed … as you often say, “God’s got this!”

Of course He does. Unquestionably. Then why isn’t that a reality for you? Why is anxiety such an integral part of your temperament?

Guess what. I think you need to relax. You are just a fragile human being, who changes as much as the weather.

That is not a weakness. It’s just the acknowledgement of a reality. We are hard-wired to adapt to different circumstances and environments. We are going to have good days and bad days. Maybe even good hours and bad hours. All sorts of factors play into our shifting moods and feelings.

There are some people, perhaps, that are so steadfast that nothing deters them from their forward march. They are invincible. Aspire to that, if you will. I do think that’s attainable. But don’t beat yourself up if you don’t hit your marks every time.

That is, of course, not an excuse to be mediocre and ordinary. There’s no honor in that. I’m just pointing out that you have to be self-forgiving. And repentant – if you habitually screw up in one area, that is NOT a good life plan.

Beware of setting some ridiculous standards for yourself. Aim high, certainly. Don’t tolerate known sin in your life. Don’t be proud of being average. But keep it real.

I’m afraid many of us have been tricked by the Enemy into judging our own flesh.

In other words, we view ourselves through human eyes. I can assure you, that’s a no-fail way to feel anxious because you’re convinced that you will never amount to anything.

Do not buy into that lie. Satan knows that if he can get us to focus on ourselves with all our frailties, we’ve done his work for him. He loves to see us sidelined, convinced that we are losers, committed to a life distant and aloof from God.

Well now, grasp this:

Your faith is based on His grace and not your feelings.

The pressure is off. You don’t have to perform to be right with God. What is inherent in you that makes you all that special anyway? We are all frail creatures of dust. But because God  is gracious beyond human understanding,  He loves us just the way we are. There’s not anything you can do to make yourself any more loved by Him.

Remember, your feelings will change. You’ll have those days when you feel like a leaf in the wind.

In spite of how you feel, God does indeed have you in His grip. That’s where faith comes in – you anchor yourself in the reality of who He is and what He’s done. Grace covers all your anxiety, all your uncertainty, all your questioning, and all your confusion. He understands. Oh yes, He does.

I think you need to relax.

“Change, and the world will change for you.”

That’s another one of those quotes that I can’t credit to anyone, other than noting it’s not original with me. It didn’t show up in a Google search. Maybe it was Napoleon Hill. And it’s a good’un.

Here are the implications:

• The way things are now aren’t the way they have to remain.
• If you aren’t happy with your current situation or circumstances, you can choose to make it different …
• … OR if change is out of your control, then you can change yourself. That is NOT out of your control.

This is so not me, by the way. My self-discipline, even on a good day, is on life support.  

It is infinitely easier to be a victim. It’s easier to state or believe that everything I experience, everything I am surrounded by, is due to some malicious intent on the part of God, who delights in making me miserable. He does this by engineering events, putting me in the path of jerks, and inflicting me with pain of various sorts.

Not.

That’s not the God I know.

I haven’t wanted this blog to be preachy, because I cordially dislike being preached to myself. I try to be mindful of folks reading this, because if their belief system doesn’t match up with orthodox Christianity, I don’t want them to get bored and wander off. Having said that … what I want to share is deeply rooted in my Christian worldview, and if that’s not your bag, stick around anyway. I’ll post something more palatable for you later. Or not; I’m gonna be true to who I am and what He means to me. I just want you to find real value here.

Anyway. In order for this to take root, you are going to have to learn to say an unpleasant phrase, and mean it when you say it:

“I am responsible.”

Did you choke when you said it? Then you must not have meant it.

Because here’s what you’re saying: You are saying that the condition of your life, your state of mind, your emotions are all your responsibility. Other people aren’t responsible for them. Your mama isn’t responsible for them. Society isn’t responsible for them. The government isn’t responsible for them. Nor are other family members, your boss, your professor, your coach, or your mynah bird. You are responsible.

This is both terrifying and liberating. It’s scary because now you don’t have anyone to blame for your situation. It’s liberating because now you don’t have anyone to blame on your situation. You wrestle with it because now your attitude is “I am responsible for this,” and you are right. So to get your situation  right, you must get yourself right. You do that by assuming you brought things on yourself, and even if you didn’t, you’ve brought your mindset onto yourself.

Don’t get all high and mighty on me. “Now Tony,” you say, “you don’t understand what I’ve been through. You don’t know the toxic people in my life. You don’t know what seeing my mama wrestle a bull when I was two years old did to me.”

Fine. Point taken. But your story is my story. It’s a universal tale. We all face grief and hardship. We all struggle. And more often than not, we are responsible for it all.

If you want to prove this to yourself, here’s a little exercise for you. It’ll sober you up pretty quickly.

• Take a sheet of paper. Draw a line down the middle of it.
• At the top of the left column, write “Unhappy Situation.” At the top of the right column, write “I am responsible because…”
• Start writing. Write down a situation, and across from it, write how you are responsible for it.

This can be an excruciating exercise. If you enter into it with the intent of being honest, you will learn some things about yourself that you may wish that you didn’t have to acknowledge.

There are some followup questions to make this even more telling:

• What are your major excuses for not making progress or changing?
• What are the situations that make you mad?
• What are you blaming on others when you become angry?

… and the biggie –

• What will you do differently because of what you have learned?

Obviously, there is no quick fix. Actually, that’s not completely true. I believe making the choice to accept responsibility can be made immediately, at any time. The process of life change because of that decision might take some time.

I can encourage you. As I’ve pointed out before, you can change whenever you want to. Change should give birth to hope, because it proves you aren’t trapped. Best of all, you are in the grip of One who loves you immensely. Roll with that.

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“The mass of men worry themselves into nameless graves while here and there a great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

The entire universe revolves around me. You need to know
that. I am the most important being to ever draw a breath of life. You, yes
YOU, only exist as a bit player in my autobiography. I’m that important. I’m
that significant. I’m grateful you get to occupy the same continent as I do.

 

 

I hope you recognize snark when you read it.

 

 

Because … I swear … this is the attitude some people exude.
Narcissism abounds. Self-centeredness is the name of the game. And it may just
be that these tendencies manifest themselves in simple, pure, unadulterated
worry.

 

 

Dear reader, I’m sure this isn’t true of you, any more than
it’s true of me.

 

 

And yet … and yet …

 

 

What is worry, anyway? Isn’t it a form of self-centeredness?
Do we worry because of some real or imagined crisis looming? Do we fret if, God
forbid, things don’t go as we like?

 

 

Let me hastily say that I am making a distinction between
legitimate concern and irrational worry. If your child goes missing, best you’d
worry! That sort of worry should lead to action, and not some idle brooding.

 

 

Emerson, the great, transcendentalist, nailed this one. The dude was brilliant. I realize that he was most likely a non-believer, but truth is truth, no matter where you find it.

 

 

That phrase – “… men worry themselves into nameless graves”
– is a haunting one. The implication is that most people generate fear out of
nothingness, or at best out of a perception that “something bad” may happen. It
generally doesn’t. The reason I’m calling out worry as a form of
self-centeredness is because worry is a solitary task. It implies that the
worrier is carrying some burden alone. It smacks of unholy doubt, doubt that
God, Who is sovereign above all things, has been given an issue too big for
Him, and you’re responsible for taking up the slack. Just in case God fumbles
the ball, you’re close by to pick it up and run. In other words – it’s all
about you, and not about anyone else. Even Him. It’s a subtle form of
disbelief.

 

 

Before you beat yourself up (or wish that you could beat me
up), realize that worry does indeed send one just that much closer to a
nameless grave. I mean, it’s self-evident that worry simply isn’t healthy.
Worse, it doesn’t help. But some folks embrace it, marinate in it, and feel
good because they feel bad. Worry is evidence that they “care,” by golly. And
it kills. It’s slow-motion suicide.

 

 

So Emerson suggests a cure in the same breath: “… while here
and there a great unselfish soul forgets himself into immortality.”

 

 

That’s lovely. I’m glad Emerson was here to walk amongst us
mortals for a while and give us such wisdom. The call here is for us to be
simply unselfish, to shift our focus from ourselves, how we feel, and what we
fret over … and release it. (Yeah, I know. One does not simply “let it go.”)
But to forget oneself, to lose ourselves in a cause bigger than ourselves, to
cast our lives into the arms of One Who alone can give us comfort – man alive.
Isn’t that something worth aspiring toward?

 

 

This is what banishes worry. If you’re a believer, you have
to accept that God is bigger than you, that He has a supernatural vantage point
of whatever the situation is that you don’t have, and that He isn’t bound by
time and space. He sees what instigated your worry, what you are doing in the
midst of it, and what the resolution will be – all at the same time. (Good luck
wrapping your head around that!) It is forgetting yourself, looking to Him, and
releasing your concern like a helium balloon.

 

 

Re-read that quote. It’s magnificent. And take comfort in
the ancient script found in Philippians 4:6-7 – which, according to data
released by Amazon is the most highlighted passage in Kindle ebooks, and has
comforted untold millions: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every
situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to
God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your
hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

 

 

That’s it, right there.