Anxiety

Is that why...?

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you….So do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

~ John 14:27 ~

I’m anxious today. Which is annoying. My inner voice is unreasonable most of the time. Berating me for things I’ve not done. Alarming me to dangers that don’t exist. Predicting calamity not from fact but from illusion. I freaking hate it.

Anxiety’s appetite is ravenous. It consumes logic, presence, and worst of all sleep. I toss and turn trying to outflank each objection, each scenario, every fear. But when one is settled another ignites, calling all its fiendish friends to defend its seditious cause. I beg, plead, toil, and lose.

Worse than the angel on the river Jabbok, anxiety is unrelenting. A formidable foe. Not just dislocating my hip, mind you, but debilitating my ability to think. To settle. To sleep.

I don’t know if anxiety knows this, but lack of sleep deadens the senses. Disrupts healing, not just from injury but from the normal wear and tear of a typical day. My feet hurt as I walked this morning, for no apparent reason other than lack of sleep. My mind felt a bit slower than normal for no discernible reason other than lack of sleep. My head had a dull ache, my eyes swimmed a bit, my thighs pulsed a subtle throb, and my fuse was quite short. For no reason at all. Except for no sleep.

Does anxiety know this? Is this its goal? Does it see my constrained condition and cackle bearing its yellowed teeth?

What concerns me most, though, is the impact of anxiety on my soul. My prayers are cloudy and cluttered, searching for words, finding them, and then losing them before my pen can inscribe the sentence on the page. In his mountainous sermon, Jesus warned against praying with too many words, but he didn’t seem as concerned with incoherence. I mean, anxiety does ensure my words are few, but my prayers lack any and all clarity.

Even honesty.

I fervently cry out a lackluster, “I trust you God,” but anxiety can hear the tremor in my tone. Can hear the mixture of doubt and indifference deadening any and all zeal. And I’m sure God can hear it too.