I think it’s funny how different themes from your life come back around. I wrote a blog post awhile ago, about being STILL, which was also my One Word for 2019. After making my new word for 2020, I kind of forgot about it. And I definitely wasn’t putting the same meditative, quiet practices into play in my daily life. I knew I was missing them, but didn’t know how much until the past week or so.
I’ve been home from work a couple days this week not feeling the greatest. Let me tell you, there’s no bigger guilt than watching your coworkers pick up your slack and run themselves ragged at school while you sit on your couch, helpless and entirely unhelpful. I’ve been struggling with that reality this week, knowing things are out of my hands, but still feeling the weight of that guilt and anxiety about being out of my normal routine and feeling very useless.
In these moments, my anxiety runs wild. Second guessing all of my actions and decisions and making up stories in my head about how the people in my life feel instead of going to the source and asking them myself. My anxiety is very good at making up stories about how people feel about me and telling me that those stories are true. It is also really good at catastrophizing situations and thinking of worst case scenarios, while at the same time, telling me that everything I’m feeling is all in my head. It’s rather disconcerting and very confusing, because moment to moment, I can’t even decide what I’m thinking or feeling since my anxiety has been so loud.
Although I’m not back in treatment (and am hoping I don’t ever have to be again), some of the same feelings have been coming up for me this week. The feeling of being out of control in my life, having decisions being made for me, and feeling like I’m letting my team down. What makes it easier (or maybe harder?) is that I still am connected via phone, email, video chats, etc so that I still know what’s going on. Sometimes I think this makes it easier, because I can at least do some small things to help. But at the same time, it’s a lot harder because I see how much is out of my control and how overall unhelpful I am from my couch.
With all of this going on, I’ve been trying to go on a short walk each day. I’m not feeling up to my normal long walks, but getting out of the house at least for a little bit is what is saving my sanity right now. Getting outside in nature helps to ground me and to remind me that all the chaos and discomfort of this moment, will hopefully pass in time. When I normally go on walks, I usually take my earbuds and listen to books on Audible or to music to pass the time. But this past week, I’ve been bringing back some of my STILL goals and resolving to make my walks quiet time without my phone or any other distractions.
It’s amazing what comes up for me during my “silent” nature walks. I hear so many more things and notice so many things that I would never notice if I was plugged into technology. For instance, I heard a Great Horned owl yesterday and a pack of coyotes howling a couple of days before that. The silence makes my brain loud, until I realize that it isn’t silence at all. I hear animals, my shoes crunching leaves, and my breath. It grounds me and helps to calm my anxiety.
Yesterday as I was walking, a song popped into my head. I’m not a big Bob Marley fan, and I actually had to look up what song it was when I got back to my car. But throughout my whole walk, it bubbled beneath the surface of my thoughts to the cadence of my walking feet…
”Don’t worry about a thing
‘Cause every little thing
is gonna be alright.”
As I walked, singing this song to myself, I thought This is literally the most un-Cassie song ever made. It goes against every fiber of my anxious being. I don’t think there’s ever been a moment in my life that I didn’t worry about something. By the end of my walk, I thought the whole situation was very comical. Where the hell did this song come from and why is it stuck in my head NOW? At a time where literally all I’m doing is worrying?!
All evening, the song stayed in my head, and all evening, I kept thinking, “Why?!” I got home, asked Alexa to play the song, and looked up the lyrics on my phone. I hadn’t realized that the song was called, “Three Little Birds.”
After looking at the title and reading the lyrics, I realized it was about someone seeing birds singing and hearing the message “Don’t worry” from those birds. It jogged my memory about a bible verse I had heard. I didn’t remember which one, so I googled “Bird worry bible verse” (thank goodness for Google!) Here’s what came up…
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" -Matthew 6:25-34
Interesting. God and I haven’t been on the best terms lately. Well, more so, I haven’t been on the best terms with God. So this whole thought flurry about this seemingly random song coming into my head and then randomly remembering a bible verse I hadn’t heard in awhile, all seemed a little fishy.
As I reflected more, the connection between the song and the bible verse made perfect sense to me. The song is telling me not to worry. The bible verse is essentially telling me the same thing, by using birds as examples. If God cares for the birds and provides for them, wouldn’t it make sense that He would also provide for me as well?
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, about your body, what you will wear” it’s like this bible verse was written just for me right now. When all I’ve been doing is worrying and ruminating on all the things that are out of my control, God used my quiet time in nature to tell me to not worry. That He will provide and care for me.
Does that magically take my anxiety and worries away? Not at all. I’ve come to realize that I’m just wired to be an overly anxious person. The events of the world and the whirlwind that is my job lately does not help matters. Am I still laying on my couch today feeling useless and guilty for not being at work, and anxious about what’s to come? For sure.
But this little message from God, in the form of a Bob Marley song, has at least made me slow down and try and put some things into perspective. A lot of things are out of my control right now, but how I deal with those things is entirely within my control. So I’m going to think of those Three Little Birds, keep doing my tech-free nature walks, pause and take some deep breaths today, and try and remember that my life, as out of control as it feels for me, is entirely within God’s control.