Anxiety

Hi all. I've been distracted from keeping up the blog lately. Here's a gem I found that helped me a lot with my tendency toward anxiety:

"Faith and presumption look alike because both qualities are characterized by confidence, but faith begins in the recognition and acceptance of our total weakness.... Presumption ... is a reliance on human moral abilities and religious accomplishments.... A mix of presumption and faith produces a personal instability that surfaces in crises and major life transitions.... Presumptive faith must have positive circumstances and feelings of success based on visible accomplishments. So when God wants to reach us, He takes away those favorable circumstances and accomplishments. He hits hard at our false trusts, false righteousnesses, things we get our strength from looking at'... Like the orphan we cry, "I am abandoned" when in fact God's grace is pursuing us ever more intensely .. .[In sum] presumptive self-trust prevails in so many lives. You can detect this attitude in yourself by your response to life when it goes out of control. If you handle it by blaming others, refusing to learn from God, becoming defensive and angry, you have the self-trust of an orphan, not the faith of a son or daughter." (Rose Marie Miller, From Fear to Freedom)