No buts about it. I was getting ready for work not long ago when I started feeling very anxious about my daughter at summer camp. She’s gone to this summer camp before and loves it! I trust the camp director, and she knows our family well. Yet, a small miscommunication about something at drop off (that we quickly untangled and everyone was on the same page about) sent me into a spiral: my daughter is going to get left behind, my daughter is going to be forgotten, and (scariest of all) my daughter is going to drown in the pool. I found myself tangled up in all the types of thoughts I talk about with my clients: what ifs, future worst-case scenarios, contemplating how I could get reassurance and 100% certainty that my fears would not come true. I told myself what I often tell my clients: can you notice these words as just thoughts? Can you notice your feet anchoring you to the floor, grounding in this present moment? At one point, I sincerely felt what I’m sure was God comforting me, and I had the thought of, “no, God, don’t comfort me! That means something horrible is going to happen!” What?! All I ask for in times of anxiety is God’s presence and comfort and now I’m pushing it away?! Because of the meaning my anxiety is making out of what He’s so graciously providing me?!

When I noticed my reaction, I was able to chuckle and recognize the absurdity of it. And while noticing my thoughts as words on a page and grounding myself did indeed bring me back to the present moment, it did NOT make the thoughts stop or take away my feeling of anxiety. And it didn’t mean that I was practicing my ACT skills “wrong.” In that moment, I was reminded of the universal truth that life is hard. Even when skills we learn in therapy ground us, even when we have insight that it’s our anxiety talking and our responses are (in my case) absurd, it doesn’t necessarily take away the anxiety. It can certainly offer us perspective, step back and untangle from a web of messy thoughts, and enable us to make decisions in line with our values, but it doesn’t mean it goes away. No amount of therapy or coping skills or Bible reading or praying will ever change the fact that life. is. hard.

…and YET the fact that life is hard shows that we care.

…and YET we can do hard things.

…and YET the Lord promises to be with us. (Even if and when our anxiety tries to deceive us about the meaning of His comfort, as in my case).

When I was able to acknowledge that life is hard, I felt myself softening towards my fear and anxiety. Again, it didn’t go away completely – in fact, that same anxiety has come back between the time I wrote this and the time I’m posting this. But instead of white knuckling my way through, compulsively reciting Scripture verses as if they’re a magic spell to rid me of my anxiety, and obsessively asking others for reassurance that everything will be okay, by acknowledging a core truth—that this world is broken and therefore life is hard—I was able to show myself compassion.

So we don’t have to throw up our hands and accept defeat by anxiety. We don’t have to treat our anxiety as some sinful thing that we pray or recite away with Scripture. We can acknowledge that because we live in a fallen world, life is inherently hard. This means that we’ll experience anxiety and other difficult emotions. It also means that by allowing ourselves to experience these difficult emotions, we open ourselves up to experience the Lord’s comfort.