Anxiety and Letting Go

Letting go. For me it's the key to anxiety. The more I try to hold on to things the more anxious I become. The more I let go the more I am free to trust God, and anxiety is replaced with peace.

We live in a grab all you can world. When your hands, head, and heart are full of the trinkets this world hawks it's impossible to receive the gifts God offers. I realize I'm using generalities. Let me try to be more specific.

We are drowning in stuff. And holding on to stuff brings anxiety. Do you remember when homes did not have garages? Or when garages were for cars? How about when closets were slightly bigger than coffins? Or when storage sheds didn't exist? Today people have lots of stuff, and the organization and storage of that stuff is expensive and time consuming.

We are drowning in information. The information age has become a tidal wave, washing us all to who knows where. Today, a fourth grader has access to more information on his cell phone that George Washington had in his entire life, for better or for worse. Teenagers can literally live in a 24 hour communication cycle thanks to text and social networks. Look around next time you are driving, you are sharing the road with distracted drivers who can't, for their life or yours, look away from the screen long enough to get to their destination. It's information addiction.

We are drowning in debt. Our national debt is over 13 TRILLION dollars. Every living person in America would need to contribute over $43,000 to pay our debt, just to get us back to zero. If you have a family of four you owe $172,000 to cover your portion of our national spending spree. And you better hurry because tomorrow our debt will go up by another 4.12 BILLION.

Personal debt is not any better. Credit card companies report that the average household has over $15,000 in credit card debt. Financial counseling services report the average client has over $43,000 in consumer debt when they first seek assistance. No wonder bankruptcies are through the roof. And no wonder anxiety medications are being tossed around like candy from a parade float.

Can we let go? Can we give up the senseless search for stuff? Facebook is trying to turn us all into personal advertising agents (Like This). Advertisers are trying to turn us all into super consumers (Buy Now). If our debt is any indicator, they are succeeding.

The stuff, the information, and the debt; they represent a downward spiral for souls out of control, people who can't let go of what they really don't need. Anxiety is byproduct, a symptom, it dissipates when we learn to let go and trust God.