When I was training to become a pastor and a therapist more than twenty years ago, I remember a wise professor saying, “Anxiety doesn’t want you to live in the here and now. It needs you to obsess on your past or ruminate on your future.” As an expert obsessor and ruminator, I was intrigued.

Maybe this description will help. There are primary emotions like sadness, joy, and anger. We feel these immediately, in the moment. And our successful growth and maturation in life depends, in no small part, on becoming more aware of these emotions and, more importantly, befriending them. Yes, we befriend these primary emotions. If this is confusing, hang on. It may make more sense in a moment.

What we know based on multiple accounts—spiritual, psychological, physiological, even neurobiological—is that secondary emotions are sometimes harder to see or name, and are more complex, often lingering beyond a primary emotion. Let’s return to an earlier example. The rivers are rising in your small town, and you’re scared. In the following days, the very real fear of flooding turns into a paralyzing anxiety about what will become of the life you’ve built, the town you love, the home you cherish.

Indeed, the flooding does come, and your home is enveloped in seven feet of water, which rose at a rate few saw coming requiring your evacuation by local rescuers. The next weeks and months see you displaced, financially strained, and emotionally drained. But the trauma lingers on.

Two years later, the waters begin rising again. The local dam has been reinforced, your home rebuilt, and the prospect of flooding is low. And yet, one evening after a weather forecast your heart begins palpitating so hard that you think you’re having a heart attack. You can’t sleep. Nightmares and flashbacks terrorize your mind. Sometimes you can see the waters rising even as your spouse reminds you that you’re safe, that the reinforcements along the river and at the dam are secure.

Secondary emotions are more complex and longer lasting. And much of what we call “anxiety” is secondary emotion. Sure, fear can surge in a moment. But anxiety can plague us for weeks and months after. And, if you recognize this emotional two–step, you’ll also understand why I’d invite you to befriend your (primary!) emotions.

When we learn to experience and feel our primary emotions in the moment, they have less opportunity to go underground and become super–charged. Even more, as we learn to befriend these emotions as they come, secondary traumas can heal. Jesus’s words on anxiety are helpful here:

    “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matthew 6:25–26, 33–34)

This live–in–the–moment wisdom isn’t naïve. It’s not the spiritual technique of some out–of–touch guru. This is wisdom gained from forty days in the desert, wrestling with the Accuser. This is wisdom from God–with–us, the Word made flesh, the fully human one, the one acquainted with all of our griefs.

What we’ve learned in the centuries since is that human beings thrive when we’re connected—body, mind, and spirit—as whole and embodied, here–and–now. What we know about chronic anxiety is that it disconnects us. It lodges itself in parts of our being, often hidden from sight until something prompts its awakening. Indeed, folks who are perpetually anxious will tell you how hard it is to live in the moment. Sometimes they’ll report losing track of their day, forgetting about important things, feeling cloudy or distant or aloof.

Jesus isn’t shaming us into a worryless life.

• Facebook
• Twitter

Jesus isn’t shaming us into a worryless life. I actually think he’s aware of the debilitating and dehumanizing effects of chronic anxiety. He’s saying that worry thrives on a sense of control, the myth that we can figure it all out, manage every contingency, avoid pain at all costs. The life and eventual crucifixion of Jesus reminds us that life cannot be controlled and pain can’t be avoided. He’s saying it’s better to embrace the uncertain moment now or you’ll be consumed with paralyzing anxiety fed by the illusion of control.

Let’s imagine that after the river flooding had subsided, you took measures to rebuild and secure your home. But you never dealt with the internal trauma of the flooding event. So, even after your home was rebuilt and even as you sit quietly drinking a cup of tea alongside your spouse on a serene summer day, you can’t enjoy it. You can’t live in the moment. Though a past event, the anxiety lives in your body today. It leads to internal torment, but it has also leads to quick, angry outbursts that your closest family members cannot understand. You react defensively and blame it on the political climate or not getting enough sleep. But the reality is that you’re out–of–touch with what’s really going on, both on a secondary and a primary level.

What do you do?

We’ll be chipping away at an answer in the final chapters.