Anxieties

"Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you."
-1 Peter 5:7

One of the things that has not changed in my twenty-one years of life is that I am a fearful person.
As a kid, fear manifested itself in quite a puerile way, as it does any child.  My parents take great delight in reminding me that at around the age of eight, I thought we would get in trouble for blowing bubbles in a park because there was no sign that permitted us to do so.  Worry was a constant for me - if I wasn't worried for myself, I was worried for those I loved most - and conclusion jumping was my greatest talent.
As I grew older, the fear transfigured, but still remained a constant.  At age sixteen, I began to have panic attacks, which often barred me from getting any sleep and, in turn, sometimes kept me from going to school.  When I wasn't having a panic attack, I was dreading the next one, waiting with anticipation for the next time my fear would twist and choke every organ of my body and make it feel as though it were dying.  I actually feared fear itself, and my odd sense of humor makes me wonder what Eleanor Roosevelt would have made of that.
Four and a half years later, at the age of twenty-one, the fear has transfigured yet again to something truly grotesque, something that is much easier to loathe.  Thanks to therapy, chiropractic care, and lifestyle changes, my anxiety became something much more manageable, a mental battle where I had the upper hand.  Still, it wasn't completely gone, and it was at its worst in the times where I didn't fully trust in God.  This past year, what is perhaps my greatest source of anxiety - my fear of failure - often put me in a state of terror in my schoolwork, so much so that it pushed me to be a straight A student.  When I read the letter that I was on the president's list for having a 4.0 GPA, I was initially ecstatic.  I certainly put in a lot of work for that number.  But now that number only creates a sense of shame because of what I did to achieve it.  Because I was always afraid I was going to fail, those closest to me - mostly my family - were negatively impacted by how I chose to behave.  I fostered such a negative environment that one day, in her final week of school, my younger sister Grace was in such a panic about what she was going to wear for her presentation that it drove her to tears.  I am entirely to blame, and I feel no small amount of shame when I think on that.
Shameful still is that I allowed my anxieties to affect my thoughts regarding my upcoming trip to Germany.
My feelings toward the trip are overwhelmingly joy and excitement.  I've wanted so badly to go for months now, and that God would allow me the privilege of going on this trip amazes me.  Still, despite these feelings, the notion that I would fail resurfaced and grew uglier and uglier.  The denouement was a few days ago when I was in the bathroom, trying to do my make-up, when the anxiety that had been built brick by brick reached its peak.  I broke down crying, and tried to regain control of myself, but to very little avail.  It took a while before I was able to continue doing my make-up, and even so, the misery continued to rot in my brain like poisoned food.
As I came to later understand, the problem wasn't that I feared.  The problem was that I allowed it to stay like a guest in my house, and I might as well have given it the deed.
Reflecting on this later, I realized all I had done.  The greatest was that I refused to trust in God.  By allowing my anxiety to grow more and more, I was essentially refusing the comfort that God provides and I did not permit Him to assuage my fears that I would screw up something in Germany.  I chose feelings while rejecting truth; had I accepted truth, I would have understood that the mission certainly isn't reliant on me.  Even if it were, I should have known that God will not use me to prevent His kingdom from growing!  Anxiety turned humility into self-reliance, comfort into paranoia, productive time with God to wasted time spent worrying.
When I finally realized this, I felt horrified, but turned to prayer.  I asked God to forgive me for my choices and for Him to provide the comfort He promised, and because He is always merciful, He did.  Now is the time for me to repent, and to rest in God.
This isn't to say that anxiety in itself is a sin.  To say that would not only be incorrect, but a terribly harmful idea, so I want to ensure that I am not sending that message.  Where I went wrong was not my fear, but what I chose to do with it, and allowing it to breed and fester.  When I have trust in God, I have a spirit of power, love, and self-control (2 Timothy 1:7).  Fear has absolutely no power in comparison to His, and that which He in turn has bestowed to me and those He calls His.