Overcoming Anxiety: When His Face is Eclipsed by His Gifts

There are certainly days.

Days when I see the grime instead of the cute handprint and hear the crying instead of the giggles.  Days when the bills seem many, the hours seem few, and the work piles up.  And I hear the voice of Haggai saying,

Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.

(Anyone else's checking account resemble a holey bag?)

But there are also days when I look at my children and my husband and smile.  Days when I look at my decidedly imperfect home that holds our memories together and our big untamed backyard.  I look at my family and friends, and I gasp and think, "I have everything I've ever wanted."  Not all the little stuff and not perfect stuff--but all of the important stuff.

It's a surreal moment, but one that has happened several times recently.   It is good for us to look at the gifts the Father has showered down and thank Him.  To ignore them or belittle them would certainly be no praise to their Giver.

But it doesn't take long for my thanksgiving to turn to fear and hoarding.  The longer I look at those gifts, the more they become mine.  My husband, my kids, my home, my friends, my church...I find myself looking at those same miraculous gifts, whose presence has no more to do with my worthiness than their absence would stem from my doing, and getting antsy.  I start to grasp them a little tighter and feel a tightness in my stomach that tells me none of them is permanent. And the anxiety begins.  I see the kids moving away, my family and friends growing old, the shaky economy, and the tightness turns to a hard knot.

But it occurred to me last night--this looking around, this reflection on the gifts, is the problem.  The gifts were never meant to increase my anxiety.  They were never meant to convince me that if I can just hold on to them tightly, then I'll have abundant life.  The gifts were, and are, intended to do one thing:  to point me to the Giver.  While the gifts He has given me--even my husband and precious children--are wonderful, they are not permanent.  My house?  Definitely temporary.  But the God who gave them to me is "the same yesterday, today and forever."  He will be here when nothing and no one else is, and He loves me.  Just look at how good He is to me!

And here, where the gifts he gives are mirrors reflecting His face, and not objects eclipsing Him from view, His love is large and the anxiety melts away.