Scripture, again and again, we hear that we are to not be afraid, that we must surrender our anxieties and worries to Christ, trust in the Lord, and be confident in God’s providence, his deliverance, his mercy, and his constant care. As theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar once observed, “When one surveys even from a distance how often and how openly Sacred Scripture speaks of fear and anxiety, an initial conclusion presents itself: the Word of God is not afraid of fear or anxiety.” What a powerful observation. We may fear anxiety and all the pressures that contribute to it, but the Word of God eschews that fear and bids us to do the same. Franklin D. Roosevelt once famously said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” God, however, wants to help us overcome even this. Yet it can still be hard to square all these scriptural assertions with the “real world,” where anxiety seems like most people’s full-time job.
Life in the “Real World”
“God must think I’m a horrible person.”
Alison, a 34-year-old lawyer and mother of three, was struggling with anxiety that was seriously affecting her work and home life.
“I don’t get it. I’m so blessed. I have a great job. A good family. But I’m on edge all the time.” Her anxiety, which seemed to come from nowhere, had been building for several months. The last straw came when what she thought was having a heart attack at the office was actually diagnosed as a panic attack after an embarrassing ambulance trip to the ER. “I can usually accomplish anything I put my mind to, but no matter what I can’t seem to power through this.”
Alison discussed her situation with her pastor, who suggested both counseling and meditative prayer. While she welcomed his suggestions, she struggled with bringing her anxiety to God. “Every time I pray; I just feel so guilty. God’s been so good to me. What kind of a way is this to say ‘thank you’ for all the blessings I’ve been given? My pastor told me that my anxiety isn’t a sin, but it just feels so wrong on every level. I just feel like I’m letting God down.”
Even if you aren’t among the 20 percent of Americans who, like Alison, experience clinical levels of anxiety and panic attacks, chances are you are no stranger to at least the more common examples of anxiety. A friend of mine describes her tendency to “go from zero to widow in sixty seconds” when her husband is late from work. Another friend describes how he struggles to fall asleep every night because he is so worried about the problems at his workplace. I know so many good parents who constantly question whether they are ruining their children. How many of us watch the news with a growing sense of dread? And on Monday mornings, I’ll bet there isn’t a single reader who hasn’t at least occasionally woken up feeling crushed by the weight of the new week.
How Bad Is It?
The truth is, anxiety is such a commonplace experience that we often feel like there is something wrong with us when we aren’t feeling anxious. We wonder what new threat to our security or peace we are missing and concern ourselves with what “fresh hell” (as Dorothy Parker put it) is waiting just around the corner, or in the next email.
But how do you know whether you are experiencing normal, garden-variety stress and anxiety or whether you are struggling with something more serious? When does anxiety become a disorder?
To be honest, if you have been asking yourself this question, it’s probably time to at least seek a professional evaluation. People often wait for years (some research suggests an average of six years) before getting appropriate, professional counseling help. By then, the problem has been allowed to grow into something that has had a serious impact on the person’s life, career, and relationships. Anxiety disorders, even serious ones, are very responsive to treatment. The vast majority of people who seek counseling for anxiety experience significant relief. By getting appropriate, professional help early, even before you’re sure you “really” need it, you increase the chances of a shorter course of treatment and a quicker and fuller recovery.
That said, there are a few unmistakable signs that anxiety could be becoming a particularly serious issue for you. The quiz at the end of this chapter can help you decide if you are experiencing “normal” levels of anxiety or if you should seek an evaluation of your anxiety by a professional counselor.
The Good News
Regardless of the level of anxiety you are experiencing, the good news is that with proper help, you can find ways to stop worrying and significantly increase your peace. Better still, as a Christian, you can be comforted by realizing that whatever worry or anxiety you are feeling in this moment, it was never God’s will that you be anxious. Neither are you destined to live in your anxiety.
In his Theology of the Body, Pope Saint John Paul the Great reminded us that to really understand God’s plan for our life and relationships, we need to go back to the beginning. Saint John Paul proposed that there are three phases of human existence in the Divine Plan. Original Man is the first phase of human life before the Fall, when our first parents were still in total communion with God and each other and before God’s plan was disrupted by sin. Historical Man is the post-Fall, sinful age we are living in now. Eschatological Man refers to our destiny at the end of time, when God creates the New Heaven and the New Earth and we are raised up in glory to become everything we were created to be and live in complete union with him for all of eternity.
“Great, Greg,” you say. “What does any of this have to do with anxiety?” I’m glad you asked.
To figure out how things are supposed to be, and understand what God really intends for us, Saint John Paul II argued that it wasn’t enough to see how things are now. We have to look at both God’s intentions for us at the beginning of creation and what he intends us to become through his grace at the end of time. Too often, we are tempted to think that “what we see is what we get.” It is too easy to believe that the anxiety-choked world we live in is all there is, and any thoughts about what we could become beyond the boundaries of our present reality are just wishful thinking. But the historical phase we live in cannot accurately reflect God’s intentions for how we should live or relate or feel, any more than a defaced painting can represent the original intentions of the artist. Certainly, we can glimpse all the beauty that painting was meant to reflect, but only if we imagine what it looked like when it was first painted, or what it could look like again if it were to be restored.
Looking at the human condition from this perspective, we see that anxiety didn’t enter the scene until sin entered the world. Prior to the Fall, God, man, woman, and creation lived in harmonious union. Genesis paints a picture of Adam and Eve confident in God’s providence, safe in each other’s arms, and happy to do the productive work of tending the garden. It was, literally, paradise.
After the Fall, everything shifts. Suddenly, man and woman, separated from God for the first time, are intimately aware of how alone, how vulnerable, how tiny they are, especially in the face of the enormity of the universe. They are naked and ashamed of just how incomplete, insufficient, and incapable they are of handling anything about the events their actions have set in motion. When they hear God coming, Adam and Eve have what amounts to the first panic attack. They hide in the bushes, cowering, feeling the weight of the wreckage closing in on them and hoping against hope that it would all just … go away.
But God assures Adam and Eve, and us, that he did not intend to leave us this way. The Word would become flesh in the person of Christ, entering into the experience of historical man to tell us again and again to “be not afraid.” He reminds us that when the new heavens and new earth are created at the end of time all will be set to right and peace will reign in the world and in our hearts once again.
I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people
