A Prayer for Anxiety
Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
— 1 Peter 5:7
I know what it feels like when the chest goes tight and the mind starts running laps around the same thought — the same fear, the same what-if, the same worst-case playing on a loop that won't shut off. It doesn't listen to reason. It doesn't care that it's three in the morning and there's nothing to be done right now. The body knows what the mind won't admit: that something feels unsafe, even when we can't name it, even when there's no real danger in the room. And the only honest thing to do with it is stop pretending it isn't there and hand it — all of it, the reasonable and the unreasonable — to someone whose hands are steadier than ours.
Lord, the worry has its hands around my chest again and I can't breathe right.
I've tried to talk myself out of it. I've tried to think my way through it. I've tried to be strong enough to carry it on my own, and I'm not.
So here it is — all of it. The thing I'm afraid of, and the fear of the fear itself. The named ones and the ones I can't even put words to.
Take them. Hold them. Hold me.
Slow the spinning. Loosen the grip. Let me take one real breath, and then another, and let that be enough for right now.
I don't need to understand everything tonight. I just need to not be alone in it.
And you said I'm not. So I'm holding you to that.
Amen.
Peter doesn't say cast your anxiety on him because the thing you're worried about isn't real. He doesn't say stop being anxious, as if it were a faucet a person could turn off. He says cast it on him — throw the whole weight of it in his direction — because he cares. That's the reason. Not because the anxiety is silly. Not because we ought to be stronger. Because he cares. The anxiety is real. The care is realer. And some nights that's the only arithmetic that adds up.
Keep this one close for the hard nights. Ruby writes a short devotional every morning in the same spirit — a verse, and a few steady words for the anxious heart. You can subscribe — it's free, or stay a while and read more of her writing.
If the worry brought you here, these might sit close to where you are: