Anxious?

             Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and pleading with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)

 

            Anxiety is a default emotional state for me. Everyone (including me) claims to want peace, but then they picture peace as sitting somewhere with a drink (even just water) in their hand, watching waves lap in on flat beaches, or children playing, or the clouds roll by. Peace seems to involve an emotional flat line… and when you flatline, you’re dead. On the other hand, anxiety can at least get you up out of your chair and doing something about something. Of course, that doesn’t apply to the hang-wringing version of anxiety in which we repeatedly whine, “What shall we do? What can we do?” That sort of anxiety tends to put us back in the chair or pacing from one end of a room to the other and back, none of which does anything about the situation.

            And maybe part of the point here is that I tend to call the “get you out of your chair” emotion and the hand-wringing emotion by the same name. When writers and other artists work on a project, they may spend days or months “incubating.” They think about the project, fuss over it, toss it back and forth in their minds, do research, etc. They may expend a lot of energy and attention on ideas. These would seem to be the actions of anxiety in this step in the creative process. These are the same sort of things one does when one worries.

            I think there’s a difference between anxiety (worry) and incubation. Both involve the same basic actions – ruminating, worrying, examining, etc. So what are the differences? Anxiety tends to leave God out of the equation. It also tends to leave solutions out of the equation. Incubation leaves room for God and aims at an eventual action or solution. It’s similar to what we’ve discussed recently about using gifts. We can get so bound up on what we can’t do and what gifts we don’t (think we) have that we do nothing. Or, we can do something whether we’re gifted or not, and slowly develop skill where gift is lacking.

            What all of this means to me is that I might be able to stop being anxious that I’m being anxious and instead give myself time to find the solution instead of beating myself  up for being a bad girl.