When You Don't Live Up to Your Ideal...A Process of Becoming

I'm not a morning person. Many of us aren't, I'm sure. But for as long as I can remember, mornings haven't just not been my best time; they are actually often difficult for me. I think it may have started at some point when I lived at home and I was going through some really trying circumstances. Mornings became extra hard because they meant facing a new day with those difficulties still unresolved and hanging over my head. There were mornings I would wake up and  be getting ready for the day and I would feel an overwhelming heaviness, even panic, pressing into my chest. I think, over time, I learned to be anxious, to the point that even when there was no longer anything to feel anxious about, simply waking up in the morning became a trigger for this anxiety. What a way to live! I envied (and still do some times) those people who seem to relish waking up in the morning. I've created this ideal person in my mind. That person springs out of bed (smiling) early in the morning, doesn't hit snooze a dozen times, has a leisurely morning drinking coffee and reading, maybe works out, and is overall ready to face the day with time to spare before having to head out the door. You may laugh at how unrealistic this ideal sounds. Or maybe you are actually like this person I've described. Whatever the case may be, I am finding that comparing myself to this ideal isn't helpful at all, and actually only magnifies my propensity towards anxiety.

Part of me wishes I could tell you that I never deal with anxiety anymore when I wake up. The part of me that loves happy endings and "brown paper packages tied up with string," the part of me that wants to say here are five steps to overcoming anxiety. This struggle has definitely improved over time as I have matured and learned to talk myself through my fears. Prayer has helped. Listening to music when I am getting ready has helped. Memorizing Scripture has helped. But the reality is, I rarely want to get out of bed, and I still have to fight this tendency to be anxious. I have to remind myself regularly that the Lord has seen me through every day of my life up to this point, and He is not suddenly going to abandon me now.

Eventually, I hope to un-learn anxiety. But I also realize that it may be something that I have to struggle with indefinitely. Something that I can get better at fighting, but that I may always have a tendency towards. And this place is better than where I was five years ago. Better than where I was two years ago. Paul had a "thorn in the flesh' that he asked the Lord to remove three times. Many of us are familiar with the Lord's response: "My Grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." I think what the Lord sees, what He is looking for, are hearts that turn to Him in all of our weakness and frailty. He knows we are dust...after all, that's what He made us from. The morning person ideal isn't God's ideal. The heart that says, "I need the every hour" just may be.

My intention is not to say we should wallow in our anxiety, worry or fear. I think we are to take hold of the tools the Lord gives and fight. But feeling badly about having to fight in the first place is to misunderstand this walk of faith. Richard Foster, in his chapter on celebration in the book Celebration of Discipline helps me think through this:

                         ...God's desire is to transform the misery, not bypass it.
                          We need to understand that God does at times give us
                           an infusion of joy in our bitterness and hard-heartedness.
                           But that is the abnormal situation. God's normal means of
                           bringing his joy is by redeeming and sanctifying the ordinary
                            junctures of human life.

Foster says this in the context of discussing how obedience and celebration are linked. For so long in my struggle with anxiety I just wanted the Lord to make me happy; I wanted to bypass the misery. But all along He has wanted to transform it, to transform me. I didn't want to have to fight, to put in the work to grow and become more like Christ. But I am learning that this fight is actually the way to joy.  Martin Luther says it well:

                        “This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, 
                          not health, but healing, not being but becoming,
                          not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, 
                          but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, 
                          but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. 
                         All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”

This isn't a cop-out. This is discipleship. When it comes to anxiety, simply fighting against it is a losing battle. But fighting to trust, to obey and know Jesus? This is life. Let's embrace the process. Let us not throw up our hands in defeat and say it's too hard, or this is just the way I am! But let us not, on the other hand, despair that we have not yet become all that we ought to be. And let us certainly not despair that we don't live up to our own arbitrary ideals. Your struggles may be different from mine, but if you 're breathing, you struggle with something. Take heart, friend, and know that as you trust and follow him, doing the things He has called you to do, He is transforming you even now.