Last week, I wrote about control and responsibility. Obviously, I do have some responsibility toward other people. I really can’t just throw up my hands and leave everyone to their own devices. That’s no more helpful than trying to control everyone. Flip sides of the coin, you know? But I realized that my sense of responsibility was actually feeding my anxiety, so I needed a third, more effective way.
Anxiety
I’ve mentioned before that anxiety is a real thing in my life. I’m learning to live with it, without letting it control me. But recently, my anxiety ran head-first into the brick wall of control and responsibility, and I was stuck.
For months, I’d been fighting with my anxiety again. The details aren’t really important except to say that my progress had stalled out, and I was frustrated.
My deal-with-anxiety tools were working, sort of. I had prayed about the entire mess and talked to those who regularly walk me through these valleys, but I couldn’t seem to let the anxiety go. It had me in a noose that I couldn’t slip off, and I had no idea why.
So I did what I normally do. I grabbed a book.
Loving God with All your Mind
I’d had Elizabeth George’s book, Loving God With All Your Mind, on my shelf for literally years. I may have even picked it up once or twice. But this time, I started reading.
The first section of the book discusses training our minds to focus on what is true.
That idea alone stopped me cold. Because my anxiety, at heart, is the art of thinking through possible threats and imaginary outcomes and then fretting about them until I’m all in a panic. Good times.
And I kept asking myself why. I knew these thoughts weren’t true–so why couldn’t I just walk away from them? The answer was responsibility.
The what-ifs kept me tangled up. Because “what if” I let go of these things and then something bad actually did happen? Then it would be my fault. I would have missed something I should have seen coming. I would have not been prepared for whatever tore its way through my life or my family or my future. I couldn’t let go of the anxiety because I felt totally responsible for EVERYTHING.
The Quote
And I read this: “God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him.”
Oh.
I was assuming that all the responsibility had to fall on me. But it doesn’t. There is a third way, a path not dependent on stressing myself into oblivion or trying to control everyone and everything. The third way is to yield it all to God.
See, my anxiety and all the accompanying what-ifs were really about me attempting to take full responsibility for my life (and Eric’s and the kids’ and everyone else I know, too). And it wasn’t working out so well. But because I couldn’t let go of the need to be responsible, I also couldn’t let go of my anxiety. It was a pretty big catch-22.
But, if I yielded my life wholly to God–not just “getting saved,” but my daily existence–then HE was ready (not just able, but ready) to assume full responsibility for it all. Anything “bad” that happened … his responsibility. Any discovery that upends my world … it’s on him. The what-ifs suddenly aren’t my problem. They are his.
Suddenly, with that quote, there was a choice before me. “Two roads diverged in a wood” and all.
Not My Responsibility
I won’t pretend that yielding it all every day is easy. It’s not. But it is untying the knot I’d created by looping anxiety and responsibility into an unmanageable mess.
Anxiety often stems from the belief that it’s all on me. God invites us to yield to him, promising to take the full responsibility on himself. Not just for our sins on the cross. But today, and for whatever is coming tomorrow, too.
“God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him.”
Will you trust him enough to try?
