Anxiety to Expectation
“It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree.”
When Annie wrote these things, I like to think she was painting the picture for our mess of anxiety, the human mess and torture of the anxious heart. We often talk of anxiety as a great thief, but I think it's more sinister than that. Anxiety is the kingpin, and we are the poor scabs who carry out the gruesome tasks ourselves.
It steals, to be sure, but we're the hands and feet of the thing. In this way it is the most successful thief of our time. It steals us so that we rob ourselves. We plunder creativity, joy, peace, fulfillment, celebration. Anxiety creeps in and takes the veins as collateral, lifeblood draining and filling again, this time with something darker and colder. So we "desecrate a grove" and realize, somewhere along the way, that we were the grove all along.
But all is not lost.
The scabs don't have to show up to do the job. It is difficult work to "undo our own damage" but not impossible. "The very holy mountains are keeping mum." But is that because they have no words, or rather, we quit expecting words of them? I believe the antivenom for anxiety is expectation, a search for serendipity, what might bring magic in a moment, what could brighten everything. We can get there when we take ourselves back. Anxiety holds us hostage, but the tape is weak, the ransom is a joke, and the door's been unlocked the whole time.
Walk through it. Free yourself to the joy just outside. Relax into expectation. Feel the blood start pumping again, the ideas start breaking through.
Put the matches down and expect the bush to burn by God's goodness alone.
