Anxiety grips so many of us these days. How often I find myself awake in the black of night anxious, worried, uneasy. So very often it is not clear what it is I am uneasy about. Sometimes I am anxious about something I said that perhaps I shouldn't have said; or something I did that I shouldn't have done. Sometimes I like awake anxious about things I need to do, wondering how I will possibly be able to do them, and where I will find the strength and the energy to get them done.

One lies awake in the night concerned about finances, work, school, the proper rearing of children, marital problems, friendships ... You name it.

There are two things that we must remember and allow to settle in our hearts during these anxious states. The first is what St. John Chrysostom teaches, that God gives us these moments to contemplate what is deeply hidden within our hearts and to let that which is deep to come to the surface. The opportunity is being given to us in these sleepless nights to right our wrongs and, as St. John exhorts us, to confess them and once again regain a peace of mind and heart and soul. Secondly, we must remember that our Savior has commanded us to not be anxious (Mt. 6). Some six times in His sermon on the mount Christ tells us not to worry and be anxious and to remember that our heavenly Father knows our needs and will take care of us. We need only to put Him first.

Putting God first is not easy in a world that demands so much of us. We typically take the consequences of the world far more seriously than the consequences of a lukewarm, or even cold, heart. For example, we are much more likely to be concerned about getting our children to school or ourselves to work on time than getting to church on time for services. We are more likely to be concerned with feeding our children and ourselves breakfast (coffee!) before feeding them and ourselves the spiritual food of morning prayer. 

Surely there is more to life — or rather, surely to live, to be alive is something entirely different —than what most of us have normalized as life. The drudgery of every day life, as Fr. Alexander Schmemann of blessed memory used to say, has become completely normal to us. The day-in-and-day-out routine of that drudgery has come to be accepted as "just the way it is." I can't help but remember Bruce Hornsby's 1986 song "The Way it is," whose refrain goes:

That's just the way it is
Some things will never change
That's just the way it is

But then he adds: Ah but don't you believe them

Yes. We shouldn't believe that the madness of worldly life is "just the way it is," that it's all we've got. Those sleepless nights may very well be the times when we can turn to God and ask that He guide us to what we really need, what will actually fulfill and completely us and make us the human beings he created us to be. We need only not to be afraid of taking the often difficult decisions that will lead us into that fulness. Sometimes those decisions require us to be very honest with ourselves and recognize what it is in our lives that is holding us back, preventing us from becoming the God fearing an loving people we are meant to be. Perhaps I need to quit my job, or find another career. Perhaps I need to abandon certain "friends" or even "family" (Lk. 14:26; Mt. 10:35).

It's tough living in this world. May God help us and strengthen us and have mercy on us!