Cast All Your Anxiety on Him
by Polly Kloster
I am a voracious reader, typically reading several books at the same time. One or more of these are often assigned for my Bible study/faith discussion groups. These group readings provide interesting and insightful dialogue in relation to our world today.
However, I do not need to read a book to know that we are in a time of chaos; a chaos that seems to be spiraling out of control. It would be difficult to find even one among us who is not anxious in 2020 and about what looms ahead. Do you feel like one of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness and chasing a promise with no end in sight? [Exodus 3:17; Numbers 10:13; 11:1; 14:23, 29-34] Or one of the disciples tossed about on a dark and stormy sea? [Mark 4:35-38]
Max Lucado is one of my favorite inspirational, Christian authors. His book, Anxious for Nothing, opens with a vivid description of how anxiety looks and grows.
It’s a low-grade fear. An edginess, a dread. A cold wind that won’t stop howling.
Sunny days are just an interlude. You can’t relax. Can’t let your guard down. All peace is temporary, short-term.
Anxiety is a meteor shower of what-ifs.
Are you there? Are you with me? Is your anxiety based on what is here and what might be coming? Are you on edge about the continued, upward pendulum swing of COVID-19 positive cases, hospitalizations, and deaths and what this may mean for your employment, retirement, education, health, and/or daily life? Do you dread the outcome of yet another contentious election in a world where differences seem to foster disrespect and hatred and worry about what this will look like after ballots are counted? Are you anxious about social injustices and tactics being used to right wrongs in this world, wondering when and where the rioting and violence will reemerge and how it will end? Is anxiety itself making you anxious?
It is clear that anxiety has a direct impact on mental health and that mental health has taken a major hit during these current times. However, as anxiety builds and impacts our mental health, it also has a major effect on our physical health. These effects do not discriminate by age, gender, or race. Research supports the link between anxiety and stress-related ailments and illnesses as a result of how our bodies respond to stressors. While a little stress is good, preparing us for appropriate response to change by increasing our heart rates, breathing, and alertness to note danger (aka, the fight-or-flight response), this is an example of where too much of a good thing is too much! Stress overload heightens risk factors for heart disease and lowers our resistance to fight off infections by impacting our immune systems. Stress also affects sleep patterns often resulting in the less than recommended 7-8 hours per day for adults. Poor sleep habits impact clarity of thought, resulting in falls and other accidents. And a prolonged fight-or-flight response can burn us out, resulting in decreased energy and fatigue.
CDC guidelines to mitigate COVID-19 spread, specific to physical distancing, have had unintended consequences for many of us on our physical health.
Our nutritional intake is impacted by directives to limit visits to grocery stores and the ability to eat out. We may make food choices that are unhealthy by overeating unhealthy foods or undereating due to food scarcity or loss of desire to eat. Poor diets can manifest themselves through acute and chronic illnesses.
Exercise is also impacted by physical distancing guidelines and now, less desirable outdoor weather. We can fall into a sedentary lifestyle linked with weight gain that is not helped by the adoption of poor eating habits. These behaviors are associated with diabetes; hypertension; elevated cholesterol; coronary heart disease; and stress on joints, resulting in neck, shoulder, back and knee pain and injury.
Often our need to counter anxiety and these physical ailments pull us into a reliance on unhealthy coping mechanisms. Rather than filling ourselves with God’s word and dialoging with Him in prayer, we turn to alcohol, drugs, and/or smoking to quell our anxiety. These are not solutions or answers to the problems they are being used to address but can actually make them worse.
The key to our present storm in this wilderness of unending chaos is to remind ourselves that when our heart and mind is at rest, the rest of our body will follow. We need to turn to God as the coping mechanism of choice. We need to trust in Him to lead us through this wilderness to the promised land. Rely on God and His word to provide calm in the turmoil of these uncertain times for mental and physical well-being.
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