How do I slow down my anxious thoughts?

When we’re anxious, it’s hard to be still. We think if we work harder relief from the anxiety will come. But we accomplish one task, only to grow anxious about another. We run faster, only to discover our anxious thoughts were waiting of us at the next destination. We cannot outwork nor outrun our anxious thoughts. This prompted King David to write: “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently on him” (Ps. 37:7). Later in the Psalms God speaks in the first person: “Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth” (Ps. 46:10). The Bible ties our ability to be still and wait to what God has done and will do.

Corrie Ten Boom was born in the Netherlands. Her family secretly housed Jews during the Holocaust. Their act of courage would be rewarded with sentences to Nazi prison camps.  Corrie and her sister spent years in the prison at Ravensbrück. I’ve walked the stone pavers at Ravensbrück, laid down by the bleeding hands of women and children. Fresh cut flowers now pour forth from the incinerators, where most prisoners left the facility in the form of smoke and ash. While the barracks are no longer there, the footprints of the foundations serve as a memorial to where thousands would spend their final days. It’s hard to imagine living in an environment that must have run rampant with fear and anxiety. Rape and abuse were prevalent; hard labor the only event of the day; death your only escape. Still, this environment would inspire Corrie Ten Boom to write:

Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.

That’s an insightful statement worth reading again. Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear. In the whirling thoughts of worry, it can be difficult to discern what we fear. Our thoughts are too busy. Ultimately, it’s not about your busyness, it’s about God’s faithfulness. It’s not about what you do, it’s about what he’s done. Folk singer Andrew Peterson captures this sentiment in the lyrics of You Can Rest Easy:

You work so hard to wear yourself down,

And you’re running like a rodeo clown.

You’re smiling like you’re scared to death;

You’re out of faith and all out of breath;

You’re so afraid you’ve got nowhere left to go.

Well, you are not alone.

I will always be with you.

You don’t have to work so hard;

You can rest easy.

You don’t have to prove yourself;

You’re already mine.

You don’t have to hide your heart;

I already love you.

I hold it in mine.

You can rest easy.

Taken from Safe in the Storm: biblical strategies of overcoming anxiety