Do you ever wake up even more tense then when you were when you went to bed? Maybe not for the first 10 minutes or so, but not too long after being awake, the thoughts start of the upcoming day start to feel as if they are closing in around you… Hang with me here, we will circle back around to why I have included this post on a Yoga website!

I, by nature, am a worrier. Literally, if you met my Grandma-worrier. If you met my Mom-worrier. If you met me-worrier. We try to hide it, but if you spend enough time around us, the tendancy to worry starts to seep through… it can manifest as being undecided (typically worriers don’t want to offend anyone); easily frustrated (not knowing what is ahead feels like you are at the edge of the cliff, with no way to back away); and always stating “the facts” and reality of a given situation. Typically, worriers never wants to set their hopes too high because they know that if they do so, they will end up disappointed. At least they think they will…

Worring literally sucks the joy out of living. I don’t think I was always a worrier. I think it came after I hit “adulthood”. None the less, it is a battle that I daily struggle with. Oswald Chambers calls this kind of “fretting” a sin. Jesus tells us not to worry in the New Testament–and there a plenty of reasons that most of us know it isn’t healthy to worry.

Along with being a huge downer to all situations, it literally messes with our human body, when we worry, then our nervous system responds by sending out the stress hormone Cortisol. (I talk about Cortisol alot.) Which puts us into fight or flight, which then means are bodies will not properly rest and digest… which leads to… a whole other cycle of struggles.

Worrying will wear you out. Emotionally it will drain you and physcially it will fill you with so much nervous energy you don’t know what to do with yourself. And if you are a believer, then you really can’t tell people you struggle with worry, because then other christians might question your salvation.

I used to believe that once I accepted Christ, and asked Him to be the leader of my life, my worrying tendancies should just disappear. I’ve learned that salvation does not equal 100% satisfaction. So, in otherwards, salvation changes the end of our stories, but we need more then a prayer to change our current stories. Our stories change when we surrender and allow Christ to fill every empty place in our lives. We need the Holy Spirit.

Why is this part of salvation often neglected? We talk about salvation means we are saved by grace; baptism follows to be a picture that we were saved (that we died to self and are newly alive in Christ), keep going to church and then it is time to serve. Whoa! I think it is time to change the narrative. Just because humans can’t fully define the Holy Spirit in finite terms doesn’t mean He is to be given the secondary role or to be left out of the story. The Holy Spirit doesn’t make sense to most of us, and won’t on this side of heaven, but He is a leading role to make our story complete. I have noticed that the conversations regarding the Holy Spirit (and the spirit world in general) take place in a small number of  groups. Humm… why do we keep shoving Him down in the Story?

Worry should be avoided at all costs (Matthew 6:25-34). The question is, if your propensity is to worry-how do you let it go? What I’m figuring out–and I’m still a work in progress–is I can choose to set the worry down, but in order to keep from picking it back up, I need to surrender all the spaces that I previously saved for the fretting–with the Holy Spirit. This is humbling, very unromantic, and honestly, somedays more then I can bear. Some days, I just want to pick the worry back up in avoidance of not knowing how long this process will take. Thankfully, God often shows us that when He gives people more then they could bear, it was to draw them closer to Him. The same applies to us today. If you are by nature or nurture, a worrier–you don’t have to remain a worrier. God, through the Holy Spirit can change our propensity to be be one of acceptance, rather than worry and anxiety.

So realistically, how can this really happen?