Anxiety
This is another KOTH weekend links image and oh how I wish I could take this quote to heart.
When I was in high school, especially after moving to a new state in the middle of my freshman year, I used to say that disappointment was my best friend…or constant companion. I know, I know, melodramatic. But I think at that point, I felt like I had just been fighting with life constantly. Like nothing stable or consistent ever came my way other than being disappointed or sad.
These days, I’d probably say that anxiety is my constant companion. Anxiety, in my mind, looks like me with my fists up in a defensive stance, aimed at life in general. I am anxious because that’s my best defense against whatever gets thrown at me. Logically I know that being anxious does not negate anything bad that comes my way, but maybe if I worry about anything and everything instead of taking things as they come, I’ll be a little more prepared? Or at least not regret my naiveté later on.
It is exhausting, though, to constantly have those mental fists up in the air. To try and anticipate every possible bad thing. I was laying in bed the other night thinking about anything and everything as I’m prone to do, and something negative came to mind….a possible very bad (but obscure) thing that could happen in the near future manifested in my imagination and I thought about it for about a second before my brain moved on to something else. Later on, though, after I had followed some kind of mental rabbit trail to its end, I actually tried to go back and remember what it was that I had found to worry about…..so I could worry about it some more. What rational person does this sort of thing?
The sad thing about this is that the disappointment that was supposedly my constant companion through adolescence seems to have bought a one-way ticket out of town since I became an adult and, especially since E came here, my life has gotten exponentially better. But because I lived in that mindset that bad things were sure to come my way for so long, I’m not able to enjoy this little life of mine very much at times.
Anxiety not only empties today of its strength, but also of its ability to see the good that surrounds it. I’m trying to figure out how to fit grace into this way of living.
