Shoveling Anxiety

Perhaps you're reading this at work and your boss (or co-worker, or friend) has already chewed you out. Perhaps you're reading this at home, discouraged by the prospect of finding a job anytime soon. Perhaps your anxiety level is pretty high.

We all know the story: Boss chews out employee. Employee comes home and yells at spouse. Spouse yells at their child. Child kicks the dog. Dog pees on the carpet. Everyone keeps yelling.

Yes, I'm afraid we're all very good at shoveling around anxiety. None of us likes to sit with it, so we dump it on someone else's desk, on someone else's shoulders, on someone else's life.

A famous family therapist wrote in the early 1990s that most people's decisions were heavily (if not exclusively) driven by anxiety. He described the overall anxiety level in the US as very high. and that was before 9/11, before the recent economic turmoil...

So what to do? Obviously shoveling it around is not helping anyone.

I once had a teacher who had the gift of a non-anxious presence. When he would walk into a room, you just felt more calm. Even if there was a nuclear device about ready to explode in the room next door, you would feel calm because he was there. People like this are few and far between, but they are truly a gift to us.

In a similar way, Christ invites us to cast our anxiety, our burdens, on Him. In Matthew 11 our Lord Jesus invites us: "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (verse 28-30).

And as Jesus followers, as the Baptized, as the Church we are asked to gladly bear one another's burdens. This is not co-dependency, it is the willing acceptance of one another's pain and sorrow and worry (1 Corinthians 12:26). More radically, we are even asked to bless those who persecute us (Romans 12:14)--including awful bosses--to love our enemies and pray for our persecutors (Matthew 5:44). The witness of the church is that we are called to be a people who witness to Jesus' love for us by living out his love for us, by bearing with one another and forgiving one another (Colossians 3:13).

We are quickly approaching Holy Week. We will dwell for a whole week on the One who bears not just our anxiety, not just our burdens, but all of our suffering and sin in his Body on the Tree of the Cross (1 Peter 2:24; cf. Isaiah 53:5).

By the mercy of Christ Jesus our Lord, may we bear with one another this week and always.