“Tie a noose around your mind, loose enough to breathe fine and tie it

To a tree, tell it, ‘You belong to me

This ain’t a noose, this is a leash

And I have news for you, you must obey me’”

–Holding On To You, Twenty One Pilots

People sat almost perfectly evenly spaced allowing the socially-accepted amount of empty seats between strangers in a waiting room. It was a cold and rainy Monday and no one made eye contact as the awkward situation was aggravating at best to most who were waiting.

Though this was not where I wanted to be at 8:36 a.m. on Monday, I was grateful to be safely waiting for a solution.

When I noticed the tire warning light and saw the pressure at 13 the wheels started turning, figuratively not literally. 

With my husband out of town I pivoted to thankfully being able to borrow my daughter’s car to get my son to school. And thanks to my exceptionally handy hubby who taught me to use his portable air compressor, I re-inflated my sadly low tire—just enough to make the short drive to the tire place. 

My mind immediately bounced from there to work to my son’s basketball game later in the day. It was like a flow chart of “if this, then that” as I ran down each scenario in an attempt to fight anxious thoughts and find solutions.

Sitting safely and comfortably in the tire shop I thanked God for safe travels back and forth to the junior high and for being in a place where people know how to fix this problem on my behalf.

Had I gone to bed knowing I had a flat tire to deal with the next day, the situation would have loomed much larger. Running down scenarios in my mind at night proves much more futile.  The logical flow charts don’t really flow when paralyzed by fear. The pattern of anxious thoughts grip tighter the further down I go.

Like a constrictor squeezing harder with each gasp, the feeble mind eliminates any rational line of thinking. It is why anxiety can feel so suffocating. 

Anxious thoughts are not rational or proportional. 

While battling anxiety years ago, there were days when I felt like I couldn’t remember how to breathe. Something automatic, something you do from your first moments in the world became a battle. Just relax. Just take an easy, deep breath I’d tell myself to no avail and struggle all the more. 

The mind is a powerful thing and letting it run wild without supervision is detrimental.

It is why God tells us to bring it into submission, to take our thoughts captive.

It is also why He tells us to not be anxious.

It is something I ponder after talking to my daughter about anxious thoughts, things that take over and worry us unnecessarily. When we give footing to the wild imaginings instead of staying rooted in reality, in the moment where our God is walking with us, we are letting go and not in the good way. 

Jesus tells us in Matthew 6 that today has its own worries. Anxiety about tomorrow, i.e. that which has not yet happened, is a waste of our time. It is a waste of our energy and thought. Verse 24 commands that we not be anxious about it. There is enough going today, in the present. This is what we have been given and this is where we must make our dwelling.

He promises to never leave or forsake us. He is with us now, in this moment providing what we need. I have yet to find in scripture where He promises to reassure our hearts and minds as they make their way down every crazy and absurd possibility, the overwhelming majority of which will never come to pass. 

Running in circles of anxious and unproductive thought only, well, takes you in circles. Faced with the troubles of this world, we need to know where to go. We need this when there are actual troubles, not imagined or projected ones based on our limited view of the situation. 

It is not our job to follow every trail to some tragic, unrealized conclusion.

It is our job to live this life in the presence and protection of the One who can fix the problems on our behalf. 

It is our job to believe.

This is the root of all anxious thought, not taking God at his word, not believing He is sovereign.

God is real. He is omnipresent. He is trustworthy. He has provided all we need.

It is one more reason I have to thank God. Live long enough in the world and you will have trouble (John 16:33) It is a guarantee. The other guarantee is that He has overcome the trouble of this world.

In Isaiah 46:4 He promises to carry you, even to your gray hairs! (“I will carry and will save”)

His grace is sufficient, His power is perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12).

In Mark 5, Jesus tells a father who has just been told that his daughter is dead to not fear, only believe.

We must believe what we say we believe. 

If Jesus is with us, we have nothing to fear—even death.

Matthew 6 asks the pertinent questions:

“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”

I can say unequivocally that when the trouble has come, my steadfast and faithful Savior never left me—even when the troubles were of my own making. The things I could not handle, He did.

The death of a brother.

The death of a father.

The death of a friendship.

The unraveling properties of sinful choices.

Empty bank accounts and looming obligations.

Illness and injury.

We don’t find God faithful in the ‘what if’s’ because they are merely that. We find Him faithful in the ‘what now.’ 

He is kind enough to calm us even when we toil and spin with the what if’s, but we will find our solace when we take it all to the One who knows how to fix the problem on our behalf.