It’s 2025. 

How’s it going? I have a question for you. How do you deal with stress and anxiety? Do you have a trusted friend you can share those struggles with? Do you bottle it all up and hope for the best? Do you take it to God and trust that He can do with it what you can’t?

I personally do have a trusted friend that I can share those struggles with, but I don’t usually. I usually err on the side of keeping it all to myself until I can’t anymore. For no good reason other than I feel like I’m supposed to for some reason. But I know that’s not good for anyone else to do. 

I will bring it to God too, when it gets to be enough that I can’t keep it to myself. 

I had a moment like this recently. I’ve realized that I’m a lot less okay with falling behind than I thought. I hold myself to higher standards than is good for me. And this causes me to get overwhelmed really easily. For instance, this month I had big goals for myself to get a certain amount of chapters edited in my first draft, to write the post for this month and plan out future posts, to update the store for the blog with new designs and products, and to update my own personal shop on RedBubble too. As well as make reading more of my non-fiction books a priority, go through a lot of my stuff to reset for the new year, and even start new projects.  

Unsurprisingly, this didn’t all happen. 

Some of it did. But I was holding myself to standards that were too high to actually function properly. Creativity is great. It’s a gift from God and one of the things I love more than most. Getting to work using my creativity is something I absolutely love and thank God that I get to do. But it’s not good if I’m allowing myself to over-book and drown in all of it. I am one person. And I need to understand that. 

Part of that means celebrating the things I did do more than lamenting the things I didn’t. 

I did get the store updated with new designs. Six of them that I love and am really proud of. I even added a new product to the lineup as well and I’m really happy with how it’s all turned out. It’s inspired me to go back and update some of the previous designs too as I’ve learned more of what I want for this store. You can check them out here if you want to and let me know what you think or what you want to see more of. 

I did also update my own personal shop with new designs that I’m also really excited by and proud of. You can also check that out here if you’d like. 

I’ve also been sick twice over the last little bit and it’s taken some time to get back to normal. 

I didn’t get as much edited on my draft as I wanted to, but I’ve had what feels to me like a very important breakthrough for the story and how to edit it. And honestly, if I was much further into the editing process when I had this breakthrough, I would have been upset with how much I’d have to redo. 

I’ve done other things too this month, things on that list and off of it, but I wasn’t letting myself see those. I was holding myself to hard metrics that didn’t care if I was sick or doing other things that were also important. I wasn’t getting to check off the things I had for myself to do so I took it as a failure. 

Strangely (not so strangely), my anxiety has also been higher recently. 

And I’ve been operating this way for a long time. As if trying to earn whatever blessings God has for me by doing as much as I possibly can. Doing my part is good, but not when I place so much emphasis on my own efforts that I forget that God is the One doing the real work. I forget that He cares about me. About more than my eternal life, my salvation, but also my day-to-day and moment-to-moment. As if God isn’t right there at all times. As if He hasn’t already blessed me much more than I deserve. And not because I’ve earned any of it by my own efforts, but because that’s just the kind of God He is.

God will provide. 

Whatever you’re struggling with right now, God is aware of it. Tell Him about it. Trust Him to provide exactly what you need. 

And please remember that life is more than the metrics you or anyone else places on you. You don’t have to earn your keep with God. Any failure you have is never enough for Him to leave you. 

Matthew 6:2-34 is a fantastic passage for this. Jesus is telling the people not to be anxious. Not to worry about providing for themselves, “saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’” He reminds them that God already “knows that you need them all.” The most important task we have is to seek God first and foremost “and all these things will be added to you.” 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that positive thoughts are going to fix your anxiety or that anxiety disorders are so easily appeased. I have one. I know it isn’t. But I also know that this realization helped me and I hope it helps someone else too. 

Our God is good. And He’s bigger than anything we’ll ever face. He’s bigger than your anxiety. Give it to Him. 

Life has real consequences, yes. Failure has real consequences. But are they bigger than God? Are they more than He can handle? He’s already seen our failures and He’s accounted for them. God is our perfect provider so we don’t have to worry so much. Life isn’t all on your shoulders and the consequences that we’re so scared of usually aren’t as bad as we hype them up to be. 

It’s so easy to think that we have to come to God put together. Like if we have a complaint, we have to already have the scripture to back it up and show Him we weren’t doubting or anything. We just had a slight grievance maybe, but it’s all fine now. 

Complain to Him. Cast your cares on Him, for He cares for you. He wants to hear your thoughts, your real thoughts. A lot of times we can feel like we’re not allowed to complain to Him. Like if we do then we’re failing somehow at being a Christian and He’s going to take something away from us. But He’s not that kind of God. He already knows our cares, our doubts, our frustrations. Bring them to Him. Let it be a conversation. 

Is there anything you know you need to bring to God to let Him handle for you? Maybe you thought of it as you were reading. Maybe you’ve been wondering how to handle it or feeling like there’s no way to handle it. Give it to Him. Tell Him you don’t know what to do. Tell Him all about it. He already knows, but tell Him anyway. Get it off your chest and lay it at your Father’s feet.