What You’re Carrying
Anxiety Is A Heavy Load On All Of Us.
Breathe Again, My Anxious Soul!: Because Peace Is Possible and Hope Is Closer Than You Thought.
You didn’t choose to feel this way. You didn’t wake up one morning and decide, “I think I’d like to live with a pit in my stomach today.” You didn’t ask for your thoughts to become loud or tangled, for your chest to feel tight, or for your sleep to come in shallow pieces. You didn’t sign up for the constant pressure of needing to function while something inside you feels like it’s unraveling.
But here you are.
Maybe you’ve tried everything to get ahead of it. You’ve tried being strong. You’ve tried pushing through. You’ve tried being the version of yourself that everyone else expects to see—put-together, cheerful, and dependable. Maybe you’ve even spiritualized it, assuming that if you just had more faith, this ache would leave. You’ve prayed. You’ve cried. You’ve stayed quiet about the weight, trying to will it away with busyness and bravery.
But anxiety doesn’t leave just because we want it to. It rarely exists when ignored. It lingers in the in-between spaces, waiting for the quiet. It settles into your breath, your body, your relationships, and your routines. It disguises itself well—sometimes as overthinking, sometimes as irritability, and sometimes as perfectionism or performance. And sometimes, it just sits there… like a weight you can’t explain, a pressure you can’t pinpoint, a heaviness that has no name.
So let’s name it here.
Let’s begin this journey by telling the truth:
You’re not weak.
You’re not crazy.
And you are absolutely not alone.
Anxiety is not who you are, but it is something you’ve been carrying. And friend, that load is real. Heavy. Complex. Personal. The worst thing we can do is pretend it isn’t there.
What you’re feeling has a name—and when we name it, we take the first step in loosening its grip.
Let me say that again: naming it is the beginning of freedom. Not fixing it. Not controlling it. Just naming it.
Sometimes anxiety is a scream. But more often, it’s a whisper. It whispers doubt into spaces where there used to be confidence. It nudges you to triple-check every decision. It feeds you worst-case scenarios in the middle of the night. It hides under your smile at work. It walks with you into church. It shows up in the pause before you respond to a text, in the way you rehearse conversations in your head, and in the exhaustion you can’t explain even after a full night’s sleep.
And beneath all of it, somewhere deep and often unspoken, is this ache in your soul whispering:
“I can’t keep carrying this.”
And you know what?
You’re not supposed to.
But the world has conditioned us to carry things in silence. To power through. To cope in ways that keep us functioning—but not truly living. So we put on our smiles, check our to-do lists, answer the emails, and keep showing up… while our inner world feels loud and unraveled.
But hear this clearly:
Anxiety thrives in secrecy. It grows stronger when it’s hidden, unnamed, and buried under shame.
The moment you stop running from it—the moment you simply say, “This is heavy”—is the moment you begin to reclaim your breath.
There’s a beautiful, raw prayer in Psalm 139 that says, “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.” (verse 23)
That’s not a tidy verse for coffee mugs. It’s a soul-deep cry.
It says, “God, I don’t even fully understand this—but You do. And I’m not going to keep pretending I’ve got it all together when I don’t.”
That’s the kind of honesty that invites healing.
Not the kind that rushes to solve.
Not the kind that hides behind clichés.
But the kind that says, “This hurts. This is real. I need help.”
That’s what this first chapter is all about. Not solving the anxiety. Not having all the answers. Just give yourself permission to be honest about what you’re carrying.
So take a deep breath. Let your shoulders drop.
Let yourself pause long enough to ask:
“What, exactly, have I been carrying?”
Maybe it’s fear about the future.
Maybe it’s the weight of everyone else’s expectations.
Maybe it’s unspoken grief or trauma you’ve tucked away for years.
Maybe it’s something you can’t even name yet—just a low hum of dread beneath the surface of your days.
Whatever it is, you don’t have to judge it.
You don’t have to explain it.
You just have to let it surface.
Say it aloud. Write it down. Cry if you need to. Whisper it to God, even if your voice shakes.
Because the God who made your soul is not shocked by what’s going on inside of it.
He’s not disappointed in your struggle.
He’s not rolling His eyes at your tears.
He sees your anxious thoughts before you even know how to describe them. And He’s not asking you to carry them alone.
If all you can say today is, “God, this is too much for me,”—then that is more than enough.
That prayer, right there, is your first brave step.
You’re not failing when you admit it’s heavy. You’re being faithful.
Faithful to your healing.
Faithful to the process.
Faithful to the truth.
You don’t have to unearth your whole story today.
You don’t have to chart a path to recovery in one sitting.
You just have to be honest about the next thing weighing on your chest.
And here’s what you’ll find:
Once you start naming what you’ve been carrying, you create space to set it down.
So breathe again, my anxious soul.
This isn’t the end.
This is the beginning of a better rhythm.
You don’t have to carry it all.
You never had to.
And from here forward, you don’t have to carry it alone.
Excerpted from the new book I released this month entitled Breathe Again, My Anxious Soul!: Because Peace Is Possible and Hope Is Closer Than You Thought.
