Reasons

“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” Romans 8:28

I remember when I learned the Serenity Prayer. I was in high school, probably around the time I had my first panic attack, and reintroduced to it after college when I was Anxiously hunting for a job. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.” When I studied addictions in my MFT program I learned that AA and NA programs also use the serenity prayer to encourage their participants that everything happens for a reason, and we only have so much control over what that is. As someone who deals with Anxiety, it’s not that easy of a pill to swallow. And the reason for that, at least for me, is a need for control. When you’re in control of the circumstances of a situation, you can also control it’s outcome, right? Wrong.

Around the time I started having panic attacks, my family moved from where I’d begun high school. We were a military family so there was nothing new about this… except for me. My brain was in a different developmental phase at that time (I was 16 and feeling myself) and I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave my friends behind, I didn’t want to start all over again, but my biggest fear, and I didn’t tell anyone at the time, was that they would forget about me, and move on with their lives without me in it. I was going to be alone. It wasn’t true, I had my family, but it was my truth, and my biggest fear… the biggest cause of my anxiety: that I would end up alone with no one to love or care about me. We moved anyway, and I was forced to rely on something other than myself an my crazy, mixed up teenager brain.

How many of you have Anxieties like that? Anxiety that is essentially wrapped up in the actions, thoughts and emotions of other people? Anxiety about the unknown and the uncontrollable? It doesn’t help. When we worry too much about what other people are thinking and doing we end up consumed with trying to be in control of everything. So much so, we turn trying into needing. And when we need to control everything, one little slip can completely derail us.

So how do we combat that? How do we fight off this need to fend off Anxiety with control? We remember who’s actually in control. The bible tells us “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (Romans 8:28) Long story short? Everything happens for a reason. God has a divine reason for everything we encounter in life, from who our parents are to when our birthday is all the way down to why we wake up every single day. Reasons. Sometimes we know sooner rather than later what those reasons are, and other times we find out years down the road why. As a 16-year-old girl I had no idea the reason God would uproot me from my life for a year only to send me right back to the place he’d taken me from. I didn’t know it at the time but he birthed something in me during that year that would come full circle 16 years later. I didn’t know I would need the friendships I made to this very day. I didn’t know, but He did.

Like the Serenity Prayer says, there are things we can can’t control or change, and things we can. And we can only ask for God’s guidance in knowing and accepting the differences in those things. We can’t control the actions, thoughts, or emotions of others nor can we control when they are projected onto us. We can however, control how we respond and act towards them. Sometimes that’s easy, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes we want to, sometimes we don’t. All we can do is remember that God’s got something good He wants to come from it, and hope for the best.