A heavy load

A surprising strategy for dealing with anxiety

It’s all been a lot lately, hasn’t it?

Sometimes I feel I’m walking through life carrying an armload of rocks, and every time I turn a corner, someone piles on another. I am weighed down. Maybe you can relate?

Like you, I’m already carrying so many rocks: deep disappointment in our political system. The normal stresses of work. Trying to stay informed without getting overwhelmed. The news of the one of my daughter’s friends losing a child. An assassination attempt of a candidate I do not support, but don’t wish death upon. The feeling of dread and anger that any shooting stirs in all of us. The death of an innocent bystander who literally died shielding his family. Two days later, blind to the irony, attendees at the RNC could sign up to win an AR-15 in a raffle (I’m not making this up). Children dying in Gaza, but also other places that don’t make headlines, like Sudan. Stories about pastors charged with sexual misconduct, or resigning due to “moral failure.” The violence and vitriol. The misinformation and twisted theology.

There’s so much we’re carrying, one more thing can set us over the edge. Like the other evening, when my gas grill ran out of propane two minutes after I put the chicken on it, after I’d already started the rice. This small frustration eventually led to overwhelmed yelling and ugly crying. I just wanted to make a good dinner and enjoy it. I’d done the mental math to figure out the timing to get everything done at the same time.

This little rock, more like a pebble in the vast scheme of things, broke my resolve. It went from a lot to too much, right there in the kitchen. Even admitting this happened makes me feel ridiculous.

I realize having food and a gas grill which I can easily refill with propane are trappings of privilege. But I feel exhausted. Overwhelmed. Worried. Weary.

The good thing about that last rock, even if it is small and seemingly trivial, is that it forces us to drop that which perhaps we should not be carrying anyway. It demands a reckoning. My tears were not about the grill, not about overcooked rice and uncooked chicken.

What does it look like to put down the rocks I’m carrying? Five years ago, I would have quoted Jesus: “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Today, for a lot of reasons, that feels inauthentic somehow. Trite. Too easy. I love Jesus but I can’t handle platitudes and I don’t believe in easy answers.

I need to name the rocks: fear. Anxiety. Disappointment. And welcome them.

Welcome them?

I stumble across a treasure online, words of Ryan Casey Waller, who with courageous candor wrote:

“For me, whenever anxiety comes on strong, as it has recently, I find that I must welcome it as I would a friend. It has not come to hurt me but to speak to me. So I make it tea in the home of my heart and ask, ‘For what purpose have you come? What is it I need to know? I trust your motives are good.’

The only way to do this is to be radically present. We cannot learn from anxiety if we are thinking of the past or the future. The messages do no reside there, but in this present moment—which is also the place where the bird is singing, the sun is shining, and your heart is beating.”

“Make it tea in the home of my heart” is beautiful prose by sounds impossible. Make my anxiety tea? Welcome my worries? Be fully present with my fear?

Being fully present is the key to hospitality, whether we are welcoming friends, strangers, or difficult emotions.

What would it look like to be radically present? I think it is the only way to experience what Jesus called “the easy yoke.” It’s easy only when it’s shared, named, released.

Has your anxiety visited in order to inspire you to keep fighting, to keep truth-telling, to take risks and have difficult conversations? Or instead, to remind you to step back and protect your heart? Both are valid options. The only way to find out is to welcome it. To get quiet and listen. To invite it into a conversation with the voice of Love, who says, “I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Learn from me, watch how I do it. My burden is light.”

What if, instead of carrying the rocks of heavy burdens, I build them into a cairn to help me find my way? To be radically present and look for direction?

Photo of a cairn in front of foggy mountainside by me.

Yesterday, I got up early to run, to go where birds sing and the sun shines through the misty trees, and a doe and fawn posed sweetly by the trail. To let my feet move and my heart beat. I tried to welcome all the feelings, including my fear, my anxiety.

Photo of a fawn and doe in sunlit woods by me.

I realized, sweating in the humid woods, that I cannot run with an armload of rocks. I need to put down what I was never meant to carry in the first place. To welcome my anxiety, learn from it, then send it on its merry little way.

Is your fear visiting with good motives? Can you welcome it, recognizing that it might have something to offer, some higher purpose? I realized that perhaps my anxiety is suggesting, gently, that I curtail my doomscrolling. This morning, I deleted Facebook from my phone. Resolved again to let the voice of love speak louder than the voice of fear. To turn my fear into courage.

Oddly enough, I recently wrote a book on being brave, which I’m welcoming to the world later this month. I’d love to have you join me and my coauthor, Michael Hingson, for an online launch party for this book, Live Like a Guide Dog. There will be giveaways, a Q&A, a chance to win a copy of the book, and snacks (if you bring them, because it’s a Zoom event). It’s available for preorder in paperback, hardback, ebook and audio right now. Reserve your copy here.

Mark your calendars for this online event, which will be held July 27 at 11 a.m. Pacific time. You’ll get an invite later this week! (Subscribe below to make sure you get an invite.)