I wish that I could say that I was peaceful and calm all the time. I wish I could say that stress never got to me because I always went to God in prayer first and got a proper perspective on my circumstances before freaking out.

Unfortunately, no.

It seems to me that a lot of my anxiety is just me looking at my circumstances with me in the place of God trying to figure out how to make it all work. The problem with that little scenario is that I’m not God — not even close. I don’t have nearly all of the answers. I don’t see every part of the problem. I am nowhere near omniscient or omnipotent or anything omni.

But God is.

The sooner I relinquish my anxiety, the better off I am in the midst of my stressful situation. And many times God doesn’t remove me from the trial but uses the trial to make me more like Jesus. In other words, to borrow the words from a song, He doesn’t always calm the storm but He calms His child in the middle of the storm.

It helps if you are able to see the stress in perspective. It’s not the end of the world. In fact, it’s not probably something you will remember next month. Or possibly even next week. Beyond that valley of trial is a greater joy and a greater hope and a greater vision of a great God who got you through. And beyond that is the ultimate happy ending where God in Jesus makes absolutely everything right and we get to be on winning team when evil and sin finally are defeated forever. Not bad, eh?