When Worry Makes Me Weary

When Worry Makes Me Weary

Renee Swope

As we drove home from a weekend in the mountains, I felt a heavy sense of dread. Laying my head back, I told my husband, JJ, “I don’t want to go home.” The stress and strain of countless commitments at home and work were taking a toll on me. I just wanted to head back to the mountains where I could rest.

JJ encouraged me to make a list of all my commitments and ask God what to cut back on. I took his suggestion, but much to my surprise, the changes I sensed God leading me to make weren’t in my schedule—they were in me.

God didn’t show me I needed to cut back at work or in ministry. He didn’t reveal that our kids were in too many activities. He didn’t lead me to take a sabbatical, although I was hoping He would. Instead, I sensed it was worry, not my workload, that was making me weary.

In the months leading up to this point, I’d spent almost as much time thinking and worrying about deadlines as I did working to meet them. Some days my concerns about commitments and meeting expectations consumed me. I was preoccupied with the possible outcome of several different decisions—simultaneously—and it left me depleted mentally, emotionally, and physically. But until I stopped and talked to God about it, I had not recognized my mental mayhem as worry.

My mind is wired to think a lot, so I’m used to the constant flurry of motion in my brain. Yet anxiety had slowly crept in, causing tangles in my thoughts, a tightening in my chest, and tension in my neck.

Instead of going back to the mountains to rest, I sensed God wanted me to find a resting place in His presence right in the middle of life. He invited me to come to Him with the worries that were making me weary.

Do you sense Him inviting you to come to Him today? He promises a place to quiet your thoughts in His presence. “Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1).

He offers freedom from the captivity of your concerns: “Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart … And [I] will bring you back from captivity” (Jeremiah 29:12–14).

Instead of letting your worries make you weary, respond to God’s invitation and come to Him—asking, seeking, and finding a resting place for your restless thoughts.

Dear Lord, when my concerns consume me, help me remember to come to You. Show me if my workload or worries are making me weary and help me to trust You with both. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

REMEMBER

God promises a place in His presence to quiet your thoughts.

REFLECT

When and where do you make time for a quiet place of rest? Have you said to the Lord, “I will come to You, for I am weary and burdened, and I know You will give me rest”?

RESPOND

Make a list of all your commitments and ask God what to cut back on. Are what consumes you external things, or internal things—worry, doubt, fear, stress?

POWER VERSES

1 Peter 5:7; Hebrews 4:16