Recently on Twitter someone I follow sent me this quote from Fr. Ron Rolheiser: “The opposite of fear is not doubt but anxiety.”
The older I have become I have noticed more and more anxiety creeping into my life. But in talking with my friends as we travel on through the years, it seems to weigh heavier and heavier on them as well.
What I found so resonant about Rolheiser’s insight was that I have long suspected that my rising anxiety is because of deficiency in faith. I have little doubt that God is real. And yet my mind is often confused by anxiety.
Let me say at the outset that I am not writing about those who have legitimate anxiety disorders. In these cases, a serious problem must be addressed with a mental help professional and spiritual counselor. Nor am I addressing a legitimate emotional reaction to a great disaster. Jesus was so intensely afraid the night before He died that He sweat blood. But he had before Him not a general worry about the future but a specific torturous death waiting for him.
For the purposes of this article, however, I am addressing the everyday worries and fears and saturate daily life. And these are centered around the uncertain future. Here, there is no specific worry, like Christ had with the certainty of the cross or someone diagnosed with cancer fears the pain of treatment. No, here we are talking about a generalized state of unsettledness about what COULD happen in the future.
And anyone connected to mass media knows that the news seems almost always bad. It isn’t that bad things are happening (which they are), but that there is a gloomy shadow cast over the future. Things appear to be getting worse and a general feeling of hopelessness can overtake us.
I do not know if my struggles with anxiety are universal, so I shall only analyze my own personal experience and attempt to bring some solution to light. I pray that if this is an issue for you that you may also find it helpful.
ANXIOUS ABOUT WHAT?
I find that my anxiety arises in a few very specific areas.
- Money. When I decided to be a Catholic school teacher I knew that I was not entering the most lucrative careers. As a result, I sometimes find myself worried about all of my family’s current expenses and future expenses. I look around my home and my mind sees all of the things that have not been paid off yet or will need to be fixed soon and it is as if I see dollar signs floating out of them and into the sky.
- Health. As a teenager I almost died of pneumonia because I ignored my symptoms. When I was young, even though I was never a picture of health, I didn’t worry much about it. But now, the slightest ailment sends my head spinning. How many of us get an ache or a pain and go to WebMD to convince us that its some terrible disease? I don’t even need to go to WebMB now, since my imagination takes over.
- Loss. I am blessed by having so many people in my life who I love dearly. The thought that any of them would be lost is painful. And the closer I am to them, the greater this fear becomes. The more time I spend with my wife the more I fear the loss of that closeness. And on top of that to a lesser extent, I worry about the tenuous grasp I have over the material things in life: home, possessions, etc. And as the economy gets worse, my thoughts circle around job security and the loss of employment.
So what am I to do?
LOOK TO JESUS
The Bible says something to the effect of “Do not be afraid,” 365 separate times. Do think someone is trying to tell us something? After He had calmed the storm, Jesus asked them “Why were you afraid?” The storm of life is real, it isn’t an illusion. But we have Christ with us!
Jesus said, “Can you add one hour to your life by worrying?” (Mt 6:27) Jesus never said that it was sinful to have possessions, but he always warned against it because he understood the danger there. Those like St. Francis and Mother Theresa avoided this by living in voluntary poverty. But St. Paul said “A married man is concerned with the things of this world.” (1 Cor 7:33) This makes sense because if you are to start and support a family you have to be mindful of material things. But the trap is to confuse the material world for our final home and not a temporary place. Jesus tells us to store our treasures in heaven because that is our true home.
There is a reason that Jesus performed more healing miracles than any other type. When we are sick, especially chronically, there is little else that grasps our attention. Christ knows what a burden that is. But even in that sickness, he reminds us that this body is going away. He tells us not to fear the ones who can kill the body but not the soul (Mt 10:28). A healthy body will not overcome the pain of an empty soul. But holiness will help us through all illness.
And in Christ, death is not a permanent separation. The love and affection I share with those who are special to me is only a foretaste of the intensity we will experience in heaven. The time spent apart is difficult, almost hellish. But it will make the reunion all the sweeter.
But even these words may only be cold comfort. After all, anxiety is less about the intellect and more about the emotions. And we fear pain. Or at least I do. I am a baby when it comes to suffering. I endure it very badly, with much complaint and self-pity. Perhaps I am not alone in this. Even CS Lewis wrote: “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”
But this makes it even more necessary to return to the words and actions of Christ.
PRACTICAL IDEAS
Here are some things that I have found to be helpful.
- Prayer. This is a no-brainer, I’m sure. But when I am hit with an anxiety, my tendency is to let my mind wander the different horrible possibilities for a long time BEFORE I take it to prayer. I need to remember to take my anxieties to God immediately. I need to remember that Christ is with me when the storm is great.
- Remember the past. I have so many worries that never amount to anything either because they were unfounded or the Lord heard my prayer and rescued me. Either way, I find it helpful to see how many of my fears never came to pass and to remind myself that it may also be so in the future. It is also helpful to think of the bad times that did happen and remember how the Lord saw me through. This will remind me how He will see me through anything in the future. I remember my wife went through a health scare that weighed so heavily on us. But God saved her from anything life-threatening and I try to remember this when I worry about sickness or loss. Right after, my basement flooded and a lost a lot of my collectables. And even though I worried about their loss before, the actual loss was not as painful as I thought. I remember thinking, “It’s only stuff.” When I worry now about any of my material possessions, this experience helps me with calm.
- Charity. By this I do not mean necessarily volunteering acts of philanthropy, although this could be a part of it. Concrete acts of charity can be at my local soup kitchen or with my coworker or at home. But when I get outside of myself and stop focussing on “me” as the center of the universe, then I will be less concerned with all of the bad “what if’s” that are lurking out there in the universe. By focusing my energy on helping others and doing good for them, I will take much of the focus off of myself.
But in the end, what I need to do is change my perspective. I need to place my mind at the end of the story. I need to imagine God in heaven as He sees my entire story played out from conception to death. And I have to believe that a good and loving God will only allow pain and suffering to enter my life inasmuch as it will bring about some greater good.
To believe this will take a lot of faith.
And maybe that’s the part of the plan too.
Copyright 2015, W.L. Grayson
W.L. Grayson
I am a devoutly Catholic theology teacher who loves a popular culture that often, quite frankly, hates me. I grew up absorbing every movie, TV show, comic book, science fiction novel, etc. I could find. As of today I’ve watched over 2100 movies and tv shows. They take up a huge part of my life. I don’t know that this is a good thing, but it has given me a common vocabulary to draw from in order to illustrate whatever theological point I make in class. I’ve used American Pie the song to explain the Book of Revelation (I’ll post on this some time later) and American Pie the movie to help explain Eucharist (don’t ask). The point is that the popular culture is popular for a reason. It is woven into the fabric of our lives and imaginations, for good or ill. In this blog I will attempt to bring together the things of heaven with the things of earth. Of course this goal may be too lofty for someone like me.
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