A prayer for anxiety
And my life verse
I’ve touched on anxiety here on Our Father Daily before.
But what I haven’t done was share about my life verse and why anxiety is such a sensitive topic for me.
Back in middle and high school I used to get terrible tension migraines. Basically, I was so stressed out that the muscles in my neck, shoulders, and base of my skull were constantly tightened and moving around a lot would set off those migraines.
In middle school, I was studying the book of Luke (I wish I could say it was because of how awesome I was but it was actually because I was in Bible Quizzing in order to hang out with friends after school).
And I stumbled across Luke 12:25, “who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”
…that verse floored me…
And I reflected on it a lot. And, later on, my freshman year of high school, I decided to go “all in” with Jesus and stopped trying the “fake it ‘til I make it” thing.
And between those two moments…my tension migraines stopped entirely.
I became known as “Chill Dyl” in college.
I became a completely different person because I started recognizing that all the worries in the world couldn’t change my life.
So, let me pray for those of you with anxiety…because I know intimately how you feel.
My prayer for today
Our Father, thank you for the grace you show us even when we don’t show it for ourselves. Father, help me to recognize my anxiety and take hold of it. You don’t heap stress on us but instead ask us to hand it over to you. Jesus, you tell us that your burden is light…not that there isn’t a burden, but that you help us carry more than we ever thought we could on our own. Jesus, help us realize our worries can’t make things better and that we can rely on you to help those worries fade away. Spirit, lead us to a place of calm and understanding that what might be pressing into us right now can and will go away by your grace. Spirit, empower us with the blessing that you will show us the way through our stress, our anxiety, our worry. Amen.
Remember
You aren’t doing this alone. Ever. Reach out to someone. Reach out to me if you have no one else to reach out to.