fight the potatoes

I once left some potatoes alone in my kitchen cabinet for too long. I'd bought them -- intending to cook and eat them -- but then forgot. While traveling out of town, I belatedly, anxiously remembered that I'd purchased these spuds. Fear began to creep in. I'd heard what potatoes do when left alone too long...

They sprout, they grow, they start to look like some alien-Muppet hybrid dream freak show. Moisture and darkness helps this process along.

 

Envisioning the jungle that awaited me at home, my imagination fomented a maze of vines throughout my kitchen. Vines! Vines scuttling into my sink drain, wrapping 'round my microwave, climbing the walls. Vines, I tell you.

Well, I finally returned home. After I dropped my bags to the floor and braced myself, I flung open the cabinet door. It was time to assess, and to face, my impending garish potato nightmare.

And ... it wasn't that bad. At all. A few potatoes did sprout some aux cord thick-size vines. But the potatoes still felt firm to the touch, which meant they were fine to eat. Otherwise, they looked the same. What my anxiety imagined proved quite inaccurate when compared to reality. When the reality met what I imagined, my imagination's fables withered.

You see, something shifts -- for our good -- when we confront out loud our fears and worries. This is why we're encouraged us to pray to the Lord, particularly in times of trouble; the literal forcing our anxieties to endure being spoken changes it (this is not all that prayer accomplishes, but it's a part of it). Actually, it changes us. We've known this for centuries, and science sheds light on why and how this helps us.

"Cast your burden upon the Lord, and he will sustain you" -Psalm 55:22

When we keep a fear bottled, under wraps ... we lose perspective on its size, and its capabilities. We overestimate its power.

You know this from experience.

When an anxious thought loops in your brain, it gathers anxiety momentum in its orbit. Pretty soon, the class you're not doing so well in becomes a thought that you'll flunk out of college, and then life as you know it is irrevocably swept away. Pretty soon, the crush who takes longer than usual to reply via text becomes a loop of your anxiety whispering to you that you're perpetually unlovable. Lies! All lies. But sometimes, lies can be hard to resist and disbelieve.

So speak it out loud. When it starts to loop again, speak it out loud, again. We must 'cast', and keep 'casting.' ESPECIALLY the stuff that, once you say it out loud, you know will sound ridiculous because it's so untethered from reality. Gird yourself to fight those potatoes of fear (yes, I know, it's an odd phrase that won't catch on), and then happily embrace the surprise that once you square up to those spuds of anxiety, you feel better. Say the words to someone you trust. Speak the prayer to God. It can be stream of consciousness, inarticulate, random, angry. God does not copy-edit our prayers for grammar, punctuation, or style.