Anxiousness & Fear

 5 Let your reasonableness[a] be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:5-7

These past couple of years have caused the most patient and trusting of God people to have days of anxiety. No wonder, since we would hear one thing and then the next day it would be a completely different story.

Before this started we were planning our trip to Hawaii. We cut back on things and saved our money. We researched and figured island hopping would be the best way to go. When we had enough money saved we reserved our vacation rentals and then our flights. When this first happened we believed we would be alright since we were seven months a way from our trip.

We soon realized that our trip wouldn't be able to happen when we planned and moved it six months later. We researched all the requirements for us to go and trusted God to keep us safe. Our first stop went well, we had our negative Covid results and enjoyed our first few days even if we couldn't stay up past 6 or 7 o'clock because of the time change. We saw beaches and mountains, and enjoyed our Luau.

We were excited to head to our next island. Our flight went well, but when we landed the trouble began. We had read the requirements over and over, but somehow we missed we needed a negative test result for each island. So now we were in quarantine until we received our negative result. We weren't allowed to leave where we were staying or rent a car. We were stranded.

This was a rough time. I deeply and truly trust God, but even with this trust I was anxious. My neck and jaw would tighten and I was shaking. I knew we had not done anything wrong and we weren't sick. But it felt like we were criminals. Several times through out this ordeal, I didn't know what to do. Here we were in one of the most beautiful states and we were stuck in our room.

Every time I began to feel overwhelmed with anxiousness, I would pray. When we are anxious we are not fully trusting God. I tried and I tried but my humanness would kick in. It did help to know I had people praying for us, but it still was hard.

Now God did not leave us alone, he allowed us a place to stay. We had a way to get food. The best comfort of all was the cross that was across the street. We knew God was with us, especially when we loaded our negative results and within five minutes we were freed!

Several times in the past couple of years, I have felt this overwhelming anxiousness try to consume me again. Luckily, I have been able to overcome it with prayers and singing worship songs. We will have times when we are shaken, but with God we can overcome our fear because He is bigger than it all.