When Anxiety Tells You to Hold Tighter

“Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”
1 Peter 5:7 KJV

I read this verse differently when anxiety is actually sitting in the room with me.

It is easy to tell somebody else to give their worries to God. It is a whole different thing when you are the one lying awake thinking about everything that could go wrong. You start going through scenarios in your head, trying to figure out what you can fix, what you should have done differently and what you are going to do if things don’t work out.

Somehow we convince ourselves that all of that thinking is helping.

At least I do.

There is this part of me that feels like if I think about something long enough, I will eventually find the answer. If I prepare for every possible outcome, maybe nothing will catch me off guard. If I keep my hands on everything, maybe I can keep it all from falling apart.

That’s anxiety.

And anxiety will have you trying to control things you were never in control of to begin with.

Then I come back to this verse.

“Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”

The word that gets me is all.

Because I think sometimes we give God the things we’ve finally accepted that we can’t fix. Meanwhile, we’re still holding onto everything else, trying every solution we can think of before we hand it over.

But that’s not what the verse says. It says all your care.

That includes the anxiety. The money you’re worried about. Your children. Your job. Your health. The relationship you don’t know what to do with. The prayer that hasn’t been answered yet. The thing you’re scared to say out loud because saying it somehow makes it feel more real.

All of it.

I’ve also been thinking about the word casting. Maybe I’m reading too much into one word, but casting doesn’t sound like casually setting something down. It sounds like getting it away from you.

And maybe that’s what some of us need to do.

Throw it over there and leave it there.

That’s the part I struggle with, though. Leaving it there.

I can pray about something at 8:00 and be worried about it again by 8:15. I gave it to God, then apparently decided He needed my assistance.

I know I’m not the only one who does that.

Lately, I’ve realized that sometimes I treat worry like work. If there is a serious problem in front of me, I feel like I should be thinking about it. If I stop worrying and actually enjoy my day or get a good night’s sleep, part of me feels like I’m not taking the situation seriously enough.

Almost like staying worried proves that I care.

But worrying about something is not the same thing as working on it.

That one hit me.

There are things I can actually do. I can make the phone call. Fill out the application. Have the conversation. Make a plan. Ask for help. Pray. Get up tomorrow and try again.

Those are actions.

Running through an outcome I cannot control for the 47th time isn’t action. It’s anxiety.

And anxiety doesn’t always show up as thoughts and what-ifs. Sometimes you feel it in your body. Your heart races, your chest gets tight, you feel shaky or dizzy, or you just know something doesn’t feel right. Those feelings can be scary, and experiencing them doesn’t make anyone weak. Neither does accepting help when you need it, including taking medication as prescribed.

There is no prize for suffering just to prove you can handle something on your own.

I can be responsible without being consumed. I can care deeply about something without carrying it every minute of the day. I can do everything that is mine to do and still go to sleep when the situation isn’t resolved.

Maybe that’s what I haven’t fully understood about surrender.

Surrender doesn’t mean the problem disappeared. It means I decided I wasn’t going to be the one carrying it anymore.

The situation may still be there tomorrow. The answer may still be unknown. The prayer may still be unanswered. But none of that means I have to spend tonight mentally doing God’s part.

Because if I’m being truthful, sometimes that’s exactly what I’m doing.

I’m asking God to handle something while simultaneously running every possible scenario through my head just in case He needs a backup plan.

And when you really think about it, that’s exhausting.

Faith doesn’t mean I’m certain about what happens next. I can trust God and still wish I knew the outcome. I can have faith and still have moments when I’m scared.

Sometimes you hand it over while you’re still scared. Sometimes you trust God while you still have questions. And sometimes you have to give Him the same thing again tomorrow because somewhere between your prayer and bedtime, you picked it back up.

God already knows that.

What I love about this verse is the reason He gives us for letting go.

“For he careth for you.”

Not because the problem isn’t serious. Not because we shouldn’t care. Not because everything is guaranteed to turn out exactly the way we want.

Because He cares for us.

There are things happening in my life that I would change today if I had the power to change them. There are answers I would love to have right now. But constantly worrying about those things doesn’t give me any more control over them.

It just makes me tired.

So I’m trying to ask myself a different question when anxiety starts taking over:

Is there something I can actually do about this right now?

If the answer is yes, then I need to do it.

If the answer is no, maybe what I’m calling “thinking about it” is really me picking the burden back up.

That’s when I need to remember:

When anxiety tells you to hold tighter, faith reminds you that you can let go.

I don’t have to solve tomorrow tonight.

Neither do you.

Do what is yours to do today. Then let God be God with the rest.

And if you wake up tomorrow and realize you picked the burden back up again, cast it again.

He didn’t say He would only take it once.

“Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”

With Open Hands,
Just Catrina.