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. . .Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you (1 Peter 5:7, ESV).
My mind can spin into uncontrollable imagining scenarios. The scenarios rarely happen in reality, but nevertheless, my mind adds anxiety to the spinning.
My wife has a simple solution. She says, “You don’t know what’s going to happen, so stop worrying.” Jesus agrees with my wife when He teaches. . .
Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble (Matthew 6:34).
Let’s pause for a moment to understand how our brain reacts to stress. It has three responses: reaction, learning, and change. Reaction happens immediately, learning takes a while longer, and change can be permanent.
Let’s illustrate reaction, learning, and change.
One day, a large dog started chasing me on the bike trail. I reacted immediately and started riding as fast as I could. If Lance Armstrong were in front of me, I would have passed him. But I learned from this chase that I should carry a tear gas canister for any future encounters. Since that time, changing my preparation for a bike ride, I now stuff dog spray into the back pocket of my cycling jersey.
Reaction, learning, and change.
With this new behavior, I continue to ride my bike confidently, with a tally of 2,531 miles ridden for the 2024 cycling season.
Anxiety interrupts the process of reaction/learning/change with fearful and irrational thoughts. We’re stuck. We can’t stop imagining irrational future scenarios — and we don’t have or won’t listen to someone saying, “Stop worrying!”
Back to the dog chase incident.
What if I didn’t get over the dog attack? Instead, I started waking up at 3:00 a.m. to run scenarios of a pack of wolves loose on the trail or, even worse, a class of preschoolers, without parents, riding amok on tricycles.
Perhaps I would quit riding my bike. Instead of reacting, learning, and changing, I dwell in an overreaction of fear, which can cause an irrational response.
We can develop negative patterns of destructive thoughts toward just about anything.
We must listen to Jesus. . .
Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? (Matthew 6:26-27)
As one psychiatrist writes. . .
How does it feel the first time that your kids want to walk to school or a few blocks to a friend’s house alone? You’ve carefully taught them safe street crossing, stranger danger, and all the rest. But the moment they are out of sight, what does your mind do? It starts filling with all of the worst-case scenarios.
Remember: reaction/not over-reaction, learning/not fear, and positive change/not destructive behavior.
As my wife, Jesus, and the psychiatrist all say, “Stop worrying!” I hope that I can practice what I write about.