Dr Claire Williams reflects on the difficult reality of living with anxiety as a Christian, and how even our most fearful thoughts can be redirected towards the promises and presence of God. Drawing on Philippians 4 and the wider story of scripture, she explores how attentiveness, memory and hope can become spiritual practices that ground anxious believers in God’s care.
It has recently been mental health awareness week and we have been reminded of the care and needs of ourselves and others to look after mental wellbeing. If you, like me, live with variable mental health then you may not need a week of the year dedicated to it. You may be quite aware of how it feels to feel mentally at a low ebb. I have, my entire life, struggled with anxiety. This has manifest in many ways but typically makes me hyper aware of situations and myself, fixated on the thing that concerns me. I am often in the past thinking about something that has happened or in the future wondering if something will happen.
Anxiety forces us to pay attention, we are attentive to the what-ifs and the what-abouts. Depending on how we feel it can be quite resistant to rational thinking and help from outside. Rather anxiety suggests thinking things and planning, watching and re-evaluating can somehow give us control. It makes us in charge of our futures and the historians of our past. It is the definition of ‘main character energy’. It is completely exhausting when it is bad and a low persistent hum when it is manageable. For anxious people it is navigating principle, a way in which we see the world around us.
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Paying attention is not necessarily a negative behaviour and I believe it can be turned into a discipline that helps us know God better.
Paying attention is not necessarily a negative behaviour and I believe it can be turned into a discipline that helps us know God better. Christians are storytelling people, we tell ourselves the story of God over and over whether it is through reading the bible or performing the liturgy or praying with friends.
We tell each other how we know about God from the actions of God in the past. We let this knowledge inform us of what to expect in the future, whether it is the words of Jesus about hope, or the picture of the resolution of all things found in scripture. Paul’s words suggest this when he says to not be anxious in Phillippians 4.6. If we are anxious Paul indicates we should pray with thankfulness and let the peace of God guard our hearts. This is not an instruction to quash anxious thought but to recognise what God has done and what God has promised will be done in the context of prayer. I understand this as a form of storytelling to us, alongside the instructions to focus on the good and continually practice the behaviours Paul has given them. We are reminding ourselves of the story of God and applying it to our lives by practising thankfulness, remembering what God has done for us in the past.
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We also look to the future attentively when we are anxious and this too can be transformed into a spiritual practice that grounds us.
We also look to the future attentively when we are anxious and this too can be transformed into a spiritual practice that grounds us. In these verses Paul anticipates that the Philippians will need to ask for things, as we all do. He reassures them, the future is secure also – the Lord is near! Both now and always, these words contain multitudes as they remind the reader of the declarations of other letters, ‘Our Lord Come!’, for example, a future orientated and informed hope of God’s restoration. These verses lean towards the future; Paul reminds the congregation that there are ultimate hopes for our future in just these few words. When we are anxious about what might happen our attentiveness to the future can remind us to be attentive to the future promised in God. We can if we wish speak that future story to ourselves – the Lord is near!
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Alongside paying attention to the past and the future anxious people can also remember that we are not the only ones who pay attention – so also does God. God pays very careful attention to our past, present and future. Our days are numbered in his book (Ps 139.16) and the Lord never sleeps (Ps 121.3-4), his attention to us is secure. Being anxious, seeking to think carefully about things that worry us can also be turned into a reminder that God also pays close attention. This is not a form of worry from God but a loving knowledge and awareness of each of us.
Feeling anxious can be a truly terrible feeling and very hard to live with. Whilst we may often feel worry and panic, and there are some very good reasons for that in the world we live in today, anxiety can teach us something too. We are blessed if we turn our attentiveness towards the story of God and the promises of our future in him.
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