This week, my body reminded me that I am very much not always as young as I feel! After a weekend on Winter Retreat with more than a hundred senior high students, surviving high energy activities, lack of sleep and lots and lots of snow, I am very much still in recovery mode almost a week later. Yet in spite of the many highs of the weekend, I almost didn’t make it there. The reason? Anxiety.
In the weeks leading up to the weekend, suddenly attending a winter retreat at 6 months pregnant didn’t seem like the most sensible plan. Add in some crazy weather and significant pregnancy related aches and pains and there was the perfect environment for doubt and anxiety to take hold. How was I going to manage physically with the rigors of the program? Would my body be able to cope with lack of sleep and less than luxurious surroundings? Would I be able to function effectively in the role I was taking on? On and on. Seeds of anxiety and doubt, taking root and distracting me from the real purpose of the weekend – giving students an opportunity to take time out of their busy, stressful schedules to be refreshed and refocused by God.
I speak from personal experience when I say that anxiety is often related to a perceived lack of control, a default response to something with an uncertain outcome. It can be hard to explain, to rationalize even at times. It strikes in different ways. For some it may manifest as a niggling, uneasy feeling, for others, a paralyzing force. Yet in these various forms it is no less present, no less destructive. How quickly it can sneak up on you and steal your joy.
There are a multitude of little things that can easily unleash the anxiety best throughout my day and to others, they may seem insignificant, silly even. Times when my daughter chooses not to nap – I think most parents can empathize with those days! When my daughter goes on hunger strike or developmentally isn’t doing something yet that I believe she should be doing by a certain age. Those days when I over commit myself and struggle to fulfill everything that (I believe) is expected of me, or make to-do lists based on unrealistic standards that nobody but myself is holding me to. Those are just a few that came to mind – I’m sure there are many more examples.
Then there’s the big things. Anxiety over health and financial worries, our children’s safety and well being. The state of the world, so full of darkness and brokenness. It can be overwhelming.
Our perceived loss of control over the big things and even the little things serves to fuel our anxiety. It causes us to ask unanswerable questions: ‘What if ___ happens?, What if ___ doesn’t get done?, What will ___ think of me? How will we manage? The list goes on. See I don’t think generally as a species we do well with ambiguity. We thrive on order, on solving problems, on being fixers. Or is that just me!? When that option is taken away from us and we’re facing a situation with an uncertain outcome, we allow anxiety to get a foot in the door.
The bible tells us we are to ‘be joyful always’ (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). Yet, it can be so so hard to grab hold of that joy when anxiety hangs over us, smothering us. How can we stop anxiety from setting up home in our hearts and our homes. How can we combat this particular joy thief?
In her book, ‘Fight Back with Joy’, Margaret Feinberg talks about 3 words that can help us to do just that. Accept. Adapt. Depend. Accept your circumstances . Adapt to your circumstances. Depend on God for the rest.
Accepting our circumstances doesn’t mean we have to pretend we are happy with them, putting on a mask of contentment for the world to see, but that instead of trying to control our current situation, we surrender ourselves to it. We accept that this, whatever this is, is our reality at the present time. Maybe our current situation looks a lot different from what we thought or hoped it was going to look like. Yet spending our energy trying to fight against our circumstances, worrying about things we can’t control very rarely ever leads to joy.
What we can do is adapt. Acceptance or surrender doesn’t mean we just hide under a blanket until the storm has passed, hoping for the best. While I can’t force my daughter, however much I want to, to eat or sleep, I can make some changes to try and encourage positive behavior. While, at 6 months pregnant, I can’t make myself achieve all 15 things on my to unrealistic do list, I can choose to lower the bar a little and select 3 of them to prioritize for the day. While I knew I couldn’t be as physically able as I wanted to be for winter retreat, I could take the precautions (and multiple pillows) I needed to make it a more comfortable experience.You get the picture.
We can adapt to our situation up to a point. However the rest of it- all the unknowns and ambiguities that might arise – that, we have to give to God. In the New Testament Paul and James repeatedly talk about being joyful in all circumstances. They were speaking not only as those who had faced many trials themselves but also to those who were being persecuted for the sake of their faith. They and their readers knew what it was like to be suffering. Yet they could be joyful because they knew God was still on the throne. God was (and is) still Sovereign over all the good and all the bad. He knows our story before we have even lived it. He is not the God of the unknown. By relinquishing our control to Him, and trusting an unknown future to a known God, we can start to release ourselves from the burden of anxiety and allow Him to carry it on our behalf.
This weekend I decided to give the details of the retreat to Him. Sure, there were things I could do to try and make the experience more manageable but at the end of the day, I was not able to handle the burden of trying to control it all. And once I allowed myself to let go, to ‘cast my anxieties on Him,’ (1 Peter 5:7), I was able to stop fretting and focus on the things I needed to. I was able to find my joy.