The Relief from Over-Requirement

I’m been finding of late that the biggest fear I have, this general floating anxiety that paralyzes most aspects of my life, can be seen as the fear of one thing: I fear what in my mind is the world always requiring me to measure up and perform, and that it’s requiring me to carry burdens and work loads that I simply can’t carry nor perform.

REQUIREMENT is the key word, and it’s a dark lead-heavy word to me.  The word, as I’m using it, is not its proper definition but my own emotional one of constant oppressive expectations.  In actuality, the right word would be over-requirement, but I was raised in being pushed too hard and in joylessness, so I didn’t have the boundary to know when something was really too much to be asked from me.  I brought this into my adulthood with assuming life at large was also over-requiring.

I thought of life as an imposing dark shadow bearing down on me, requiring me to do things that I simply didn’t have the ability to do.  And if I could somehow muster the ability, it was at the cost to any feeling of natural well-being.  I would have to suffer in striving to be capable enough, never having the time to just enjoy my day or even life.

I crave peace.  I’m willing to turn over so many stones to find that wellspring of life and peace that the Bible speaks of and says is possible for me.  I look at my life –  so much I worried about really didn’t have anything waiting for me to do.  There wasn’t anything required of me.  In fact, most things in life doesn’t have any requirements from me.

My fear-based childhood caused me to make them up.

I was always only required to be me, the person whom God created and deliberately placed on the Earth.  I spent my life being what I thought the world wanted me to be and lost the peace of simply moving and creating as the person God made me, accepting His provision along the way.

There are days that can be nothing but sad, but I have the right to generally enjoy my life by actively choosing to do things that bring me enjoyment where I have the ability and control.  I can deliberately be happy, I’m not more ‘responsible’ if I leave my day grey.  It’s such a simple thing but I’m only now actually healed enough to understand this.

I’m also understanding that I always had this option.  Meaning, if only my parents had brought me up with seeking to enjoy life instead of with the sense that as an unwanted child I should only be content with the basics, which were grudgingly given to me.  I have never acquired the tools to seek a sense of well-being.  I wasn’t raised to know this, of course, but my acknowledgment that this option is always there for anyone helps me understand that I’m not asking for too much to learn how to practice this now.

God didn’t create us and place us in this world to be miserable, He created us to bring to the table all that is truly us in joy and to proclaim that He has made this day and He’s made it available to us to rejoice and be happy in it.  Those who have abusive childhoods have been horribly delayed in this knowledge, but the Bible has written down the means for even us to get there.

All good things are from God, and they are meant for us, too.

Worry and anxiety is placing faith in Evil rather than God.

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