Dear Anxiety,

Anxiety. It crawls on my skin and flows through my blood, invisible as though a disease. I feel it there, on my arms, in the tips of my fingers, running down into the pit of my stomach. It is physical, afflicting flesh, eating away at it. The feeling isn’t new. It isn’t an old friend.  It is sickeningly familiar.

The pain licks at me, at my skin. It beckons me with its burning flames- little whispers:

            “Live in me. You can’t break free from me. I live on you and in you, attached to your body, feeding on your life like a parasite. I encapsulate you. For where can you go without your body? I tell you who you are, because I. Am. You. When you run, I will follow. You feel it now, the fear being born within, blooming and growing like a beautiful weed, its’ unseen thorns tearing into you, weaving around your heart, choking the life you must give to me. Why fight when I have you ever so tightly? You squirm and I silence. You. Are. Me.”

I smile. I do feel him, pressing on my flesh, speaking to my mind, the weakness trying to cripple my thoughts, trying to paralyze my bones.

And I say, take it. Take my flesh. Take my dignity. Take my pride. Break me- I dare you. I challenge you to trap me. You can make me feel any way you damn well want. For what is my flesh but mortal? You cannot have my soul. I gave it to another a long time ago. What am I underneath skin and bone and thought? What I am when I am nothing?

            I am the beloved creation of the One True King. And you cannot touch me. Take away my worldly security. Take away my comfort. Take away my knowledge. I hear your voice- it sounds like screaming to my ears. I hear what you tell me I am you filthy liar. But heaven knows me by another name. I hear it, whispered into my soul, a place you cannot enter: “Joy”

And the truth consumes me, a holy fire burning away the lies, cutting through the weeds and thorns, refining like silver all that you have tried to corrupt. And when everything falls apart, He stands. And when He stands, you flee. How dare you try to defile the masterpiece of your God? And He is your God, your Destroyer; your Nightmare. His wrath and jealousy for what you have stolen will be avenged, will be redeemed. His very breath, very whisper wipes away your power. And the very hand that created will destroy. And that very same hand will brush away every tear. It is the hands that hold the world in place, that carry the broken people who believed in fear.

I take refuge in Him and Him alone. Take away everything, because you cannot touch my eternal position in the Lord. He is Everything. All I will ever need. And after I have suffered a little while, after I have learned how to fall madly in love with my Healer, I will receive my God. I will take ahold of that to which He has called me.

And right now, I choose Joy. I choose Love. I choose Life. I choose Freedom. What power have you in comparison to my Jesus? I will stand, not under your vicious lies, but under Grace. I will sing with Joy for my soul is safe and saved and my King is good. He is glorious. I will dance and laugh and play, for I am His child. And I will cry and I will break, but the Father holds me through it all and He will remember my Faith and my pain.

So Anxiety; Fear; Pride- you will pay. My God stands firm, a Rock in the storm. He is not on the surface, on my flesh. He is not my feelings. Like you, He is unseen, because He lives within my very Being, an anchor to my soul. As He died, I die. And as He lives in me, I live. 

Without Him, I am as you say; nothing. But Truth says something else. With Him, I am a heir of Heaven. With Him, in Him, through Him, I am Joy. What can stand against? When you work in my life, you are foolish. Because, when everything falls apart, my God stands and I know Him. I know His voice, His truth, and I know that I will never know it all. Anxiety, when you work, I know Him more. I am Joy- His Joy. I am not a feeling or a circumstance. I am a Believer and more so, a Follower of Truth.  I am a Daughter of the Great I Am.
So Anxiety, fuck you.