Our Minds in a State of War
According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America ” Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year. “
A while ago, a patient that I’ve treated soon after his return from a tour of duty in Iraq during the peak of the war shared his heightened levels of anxieties with me.
His mind was in a state of war even in the quietness of an exam room in Indiana far away from the battlefields of Baghdad where he experienced the terror of IEDs and the death of few of his army buddies.
To my surprise, his state of worries and anxieties weren’t related to the war zone that he just came from, but to the prospect of not finding a job and the potential financial setbacks in America. He shared that his anxieties about the unknown future awaiting him in the United States were worst than the fear of war and dying in Iraq.
As a Family Physician, I treat a lot of patients who are overwhelmed with their anxieties, and whose minds and hearts are in a constant war against countless fears, worries, and anxieties. Many of us live in an anxiety state worried about when the other shoe will drop, and the feared potential of a financial crisis, a job loss, a rejection, the next email or an unexpected disaster.
We live in a fast paced world that’s overflowing with tension, competition, deception, betrayal, jealousy, and greed. A dog eat dog world where genuine love, grace, and compassion are often hard to find.
Could that be one of the main reasons that 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety? Is that one of the main reasons why hundreds of millions of people globally have anxiety disorders?
Learning When To Stop
The journey of overcoming anxieties and the heightened level of worries in our human minds can take time. Yet, it’s a war that will surely be won with patience, faith, the right thoughts, support and genuine help. And if needed with medications and compassionate professional counseling.
Friends, even as we pursue all of the above in our journey of healing let’s consider and reflect on these words of truth and hopefully transforming thoughts.
Peace, Love, value, security, forgiveness, affirmation and acceptance are God-made and freely given to us by God our maker. Not by a world where love and compassion is scarce but by One Perfect God.
Holiness and perfection is beyond our human abilities. They are offered to us despite our human failures and sins courtesy of God’s perfect love. Not by our imperfect world where hurts and darkness abound.
God’s perfect love drives out our fears
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
1 John 4:18
We all need to let the soft and caring voice of God lead us, and not to be led by the voice of our fears and anxieties.
Can we hear God’s gentle voice in our loud and noisy world, and in life’s challenges?
Let’s just do our part well, and do the best that we humanly can do, Then let’s stop and have faith that God can and will do his supernatural and miraculous part to change our circumstances, open doors of opportunities, and lead us to what is right and best for us.
God help us all to learn the Art Of Stopping and waiting. To learn when to stop, and to let God take over.
But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40:31