Entrust all fear and anxiety to our Lord

Picture this: you are a junior in college, it is the last two weeks of school, and you have multiple projects due. The ones that are most frightening are the two philosophy papers for two of your most challenging courses. These papers, alongside the preparation for finals, leave you in a state of slight paralysis as you’re not quite sure where to even start.

Why do I bring this up? This is a snapshot of what I felt during my junior year of college seminary. I was so stressed that I was paralyzed for about half a week, during which I couldn’t even think about writing those two papers. While what I described may be slightly exaggerated, what happens to us when tasks before us seem insurmountable?

I was sitting in the library staring at my computer with an open Word document where I had written only the title and the prompt. Then the gentle thought crept into my stressed consciousness, “Have you invited Jesus to be with you in this?” My first reaction was, “Well no, I have not, why would Jesus want to be with me while writing a paper?” As I sat and pondered my answer to that question, I remembered one of the retreats that I had attended earlier that spring where the priest had invited us to ask Jesus to be with us in every moment of every day.

The priest said that Jesus desires to encounter and be in relationship with us. As with any relationship, this can only take place in the present moment. As I continued to mull this over, I decided that stressing out about this paper was not getting me anywhere, so I decided to pray a simple prayer in which I invited Jesus into the stress and entrusted the paper to him. Then I began to write. The stress and fear that had formerly paralyzed me were replaced with a sense of peace which continued with me throughout the two weeks of paper-writing and finals preparation. The course work did not get any easier in the sense that there was miraculously less to do, but with the knowledge that I had entrusted it all to Jesus, there was a great sense of peace in whatever the outcome would be. That sense of peace freed me to do what I needed without being overwhelmed.

With the coronavirus pandemic, which as I write this is the source of much fear and anxiety, I have been reminded many times of that simple lesson which the Lord taught me in my undergraduate years. More important than the grade that I got on those papers was what I learned from that entire situation: Jesus truly does want to be in relationship with us and we can entrust anything to him because he really does love us and want what is best for us. This does not mean that I do not struggle with giving into the fear. What it does mean is that I know I can trust him and invite him to be here with me in the midst of my fears and anxieties in this troubled time.