On the way to church Sunday I began to feel outraged. Running through my mind were all the different teachings I have heard about worry and anxiety. The outrage came from the fact that most of them left me feeling ashamed for my lack of faith. One speaker went as far as to call anxiety a “failure of faith”. I remembered the shame that I felt after hearing this speaker. He was (and is) a very well known and respected Christian speaker. But his words crushed me. My outrage was because I know that there are others like me who need help ridding themselves of anxiety, but are often left instead feeling shame on top of their anxiety – leading to depression.
I am certain that the teachers in my past have had no intension of causing shame. I think instead the problem comes in when the issues of worry and anxiety are treated as one “simple” issue rather than making a distinction between common worry and more deeply rooted anxiety. First I’d like to describe what I see as the difference between concern, worry and anxiety.
A concern is something that comes from the reality of a situation. You are concerned because your teenager is out past their curfew. Worry is when the imagination starts eating at you. Being worried that since your teen is out past their curfew it means that they have been in a car accident. Anxiety is when the person’s imagination begins to take over their ability to think rationally. This can happen to varying degrees:
• Feeling anxious about your teenager making it home safely 1 hour before they are due.
• Feeling anxious about it before they leave the house and requiring them to call to check in with you at regular intervals.
• Feeling overwhelmed by anxiety and not allowing your teen to go out with their friends because of what might happen to them.
OR
• Having an anxious feeling and attributing it to the fact that your 4 year old daughter just announced her “marriage” to a boy at her daycare. You then cannot sleep for the panic you feel about her getting married to an abusive husband and never seeing her again. In the morning you make her promise you that she will get your full approval before she decides to marry anyone else.
Sound extreme? Of course it is, but it is also the reality that many people – Christians included - attempt to cope with every day. As you can see, using the words worry and anxiety interchangeably is like lumping a housecat together with a tiger. They are both in the same family and they have many traits in common; but, in order to manage them one requires a lot more in-depth understanding than the other.
The beauty in this truth is that God is calling you into a much more intimate communion with Him as you seek a more Biblical understanding of coping with anxiety. Remember Paul’s thorn in his flesh? God’s power is made perfect – complete – in our weakness. The process of healing and being free of anxiety will lead you right into His loving embrace. There you will know the peace of Christ that surpasses all understanding.
“Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)
By Jennifer Young, LPC – Telephone Christian Counselor. For more information, visit www.Thy-Kingdm.com .
Jennifer is a Licensed Professional Counselor who provides telephone counseling services from her home in East Texas. Her desire is to help others find the hope and healing that she has found in her relationship with Christ. For more on Jennifer's beliefs, visit her website www.Thy-Kingdm.com, and click on "What I believe".