Don’t Keep Your Problems to Yourself

Don’t Keep Your Problems to Yourself My 20s were a time of incredible stress. I was neck-deep in my graduate studies, volunteering as a youth leader at my church, commuting for work and school, and I was poor. I was so, so poor. I was worried all the time about how I was going to pay my bills and finish what was on my to-do list every day. I was anxious to the point that I was having panic attacks in my car, at my intern site, and in the church bathroom. And I wasn’t talking about it with anyone. I think that the silence of it was my downfall. It wasn’t that I was stressed and anxious because those things made sense for that time of my life. The problem was that I hadn’t admitted that I was feeling those things. In Acts 3, Peter calls the people listening to him to turn away from the things that are getting in the way of their health and functioning and- quite simply- to turn to God instead. He doesn’t do this to shame them or make them feel bad, but so “that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” The act of admitting there’s a problem, of saying out loud the thing that is getting in the way, of not staying silent, that’s the very thing that is going to bring relief.