Have you ever worried so much about something that you started to cry?

One of the worst things for me was always having to give a presentation in front of the class. I would worry about it for days leading up to it. Sometimes I would even pray that God would give me the flu just so that I wouldn’t have to get up in front of the class. By the time it would be my turn to present, I had worked myself up so much that I was almost crying through the whole presentation. This almost seems a hundred times more embarrassing than just having to give the presentation. 

We live in a society that seems to be constantly worried. When we are in school, it is about our grades, our friends, or who likes who. Sometimes those worries are deeper, about basic needs. It could be worry about a loved one dying, or where your next meal is going to come from, or if there will even be a next meal. 

Sometimes people try to help by saying things like “It’s fine, don’t worry about it.” That can be hard to do, especially when it is all that you can think of. 

We try to cope on our own by trying to avoid the situation, or not talking about it. That just makes things worse because whether we acknowledge the worry or not, it is still there. Our body still knows about the stress of the worry. 

When our body is worried, it is stressed. This causes the part of the brain that makes core happy memories to shut down. Because it is in survival mode, that means that you are left with only the negativity. 

Suddenly life looks very lonely, you feel as though no one cares or understands you. 

Your brain is so focused on what you are worried about, because it must be dangerous, that you can no longer see the good in situations. This is where so many people live. Constantly worrying because they see all the things that could go wrong. 

Your body can take only so much of this before it feels the need to take action. In some aspects, this looks like a complete breakdown. In others, it looks like a hardening and an anger towards everything. Neither of these situations is what God wants for you. 

You may say if God didn’t want me to be like this then he shouldn’t have made me like this. But that is faulty logic. You see God gave us every single emotion that we have because he has emotions. We were made in his image, which includes our emotions. 

Emotions are not bad on their own they are a gift from God. How boring would like be if we had no emotions! 

What we choose to do with our emotions can be bad though. Worry can be good, it can protect you from getting run over by a car. However when you allow that worry to consume your thoughts, then suddenly it is no longer a tool to help you. 

So how do we use worry as a tool to help us instead of causing anger or mental breakdowns?

We do what Philippians chapter four says. We pray about everything and then we fix our minds on good things. When we do this it does two things that are so important.

First, it acknowledges the worry and allows you to talk it out and find where the root of it is coming from. Which will then help you to understand if it is something that you need to worry about. 

The second thing that it does is it changes your mindset. You go from being stuck in the doom spiral of worry to thinking about all the goodness of God. I don’t know about you but when I think about God, I’m not worried. I am excited and happy. 

It is okay to have emotions, we are human after all. We have to make sure that we are taking control of them, and that we are allowing them to help us and not harm us.