The Single Best Advantage I Gained From Anxiety

RABID discontentment was the single best advantage I ever experienced out of seasons of anxiety when I have suffered. Admittedly, I have not been worn down by clinical disorders, but I have experienced several seasons of anxiety. And what I found worked for me was to not rest in that rabid discontentment, but to search with all I had to find a way through.

The single best advantage I gained from anxiety was it gave me impetus to fight.

Why do we just sit there and take it; this grating sense of inner itchy discontent?

The times I’ve had to fight to survive, and the times I’ve had to fight in the hope I could overcome anxiety, were the times I did what I needed to do, instinctively, by faith.

It’s all about the tenacity to search. To search is to enter the caldron by faith — and years may pass without much vision for what we hope for. It’s not the point. The point is we continue to press on, even though from time to time we give up.

Like entering university or college, we learn to research for the first time, being forced to search in order to know enough truth to do a good job of our assignments. The same applies for the capacity of anxiety to force us to use our ingenuity — birthed from the belief that we can climb out of the distress.

The single best advantage I gained from anxiety was to fight like crazy to find, to search, for the way or ways out. Such a search inevitably causes us to learn great skills and attitudes that set us up for the rest of our lives.

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All we need when we suffer anxiety is to know that our suffering isn’t in vain. It has its purpose.

Sometimes the only hope we have left is to believe. And it’s always enough. It’s always enough to believe in something worth believing in. Some sceptics might say we are wasting our time, but to give up without believing is to have zero percent chance.

I’d rather have a fighting chance. And, besides, those of us in the faith have seen God work miracles when we had faith and simply did what faith requires: obeyed.

If we will search for the answers in addressing our anxiety we may be pleasantly surprised at what we might learn.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.