Isn’t it crazy how fast things can happen? I just read an article on a woman who was a wife and soon-to-be mother, and because of a drunk driver, her husband and unborn child were killed in a car accident. I know someone whose world just shifted because her health just took a turn in a negative direction. I have met people whose lives are run on anxiety. I had a close friend die of a freak incident of a brain tumor that developed within a month. Just like that, in a blink of an eye, your life can change.

When you lose a loved one, when your health takes that turn, when you face a situation that you never thought could happen. You know what you’re supposed to do? Have faith.

But sometimes it’s so damn hard to have faith. I remember writing in my journal a while ago on how it’s so hard to ask someone to have faith. When it seems like your world has just shattered and now it will never be the same, but if you are a believer, you are asked to believe in our Heavenly Father that this is His plan and to have faith in it. Always believing in His Word, as said in Proverbs 5:6, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.In all your ways acknowledge him,and he will make straight your paths."

I have struggled with this greatly because I have suffered in my own ways. I have hurt beyond what I thought I could feel. I have fought many battles and came out wounded and different. Anxiety has flipped my world upside down. Life has kicked my ass over and over again and it's proven time and time around that life is hard. But the thing is, it doesn’t have to be if we all just have faith.

The reason were asked to have faith is because everything is out of our control. Everything. God has a plan for us. Our entire lives are already planned out exactly how they're supposed to be. It doesn’t matter how much you work out, diet, stay away from all things that are supposed to give you cancer. Your life will go on the exact way He planned it to be. (Granted,, I’m not saying this is a free pass to not work out or diet, I still recommend those things.) So having anxiety and stress about it is unneeded, but I had to find it within myself to believe that after some trials with anxiety I encountered.

I had insane anxiety about two years ago. I worried about everything there was to worry about, especially my health. I was basically a hypochondriac. If I got a pain in my head, I immediately was like, “Alright here we go, this is it, this must be the end!” Or if my chest was tight, boom, I was about to drop dead from having a heart attack right then and there. If I was swimming in the ocean, all a sudden every shark in the water knew that I was there and was out to get me. I even worried about choking. I’ve never choked in my life, but by golly, if I didn’t chew my food so intensely, I was going to choke so I stopped eating. I didn’t want to go out. I definitely didn’t want to go out and eat at restaurants. My life, and who I was before my anxiety, was gone.

I convinced myself I had a brain tumor. I was home in San Antonio for Christmas break and I told my mom that there was something seriously wrong with me, that I wanted an MRI, a CAT scan, everything they could do I needed because I had a brain tumor. She set me up an appointment in Tyler, Texas where my sister and I lived and attended college. My sister took me to my appointment and we couldn’t find the building it was located in. I remember sprinting from each building, desperately trying to find some indication that I was in the right place, and when I finally reached the front desk, I was too late. They could no longer see me because it was past my appointment time. I immediately started sobbing and telling my sister she didn’t understand that I had something seriously wrong with me.

I missed who I was. I missed my life when I used to be so careless and free. I was so controlled over everything I couldn’t control, because I was always so terrified or stressed. I was always the goofball of the family, making jokes, laughing, always full of life. I was missing my faith.

It wasn’t until a couple of months later that I accepted that if I had a brain tumor then I had one, and there was nothing I could do about it. (By the way, I never did have a brain tumor.) If I was going to choke, I was going to choke. If I was going to be a 21-year old girl to die from a heart attack, then that’s what was going to happen.

I had to let go of my fears and anxiety over the little things and/or big things, because God was going to take care of me. He already planned out my entire life and I could either stress about it or I could live it to the fullest. I had to remember the verse in Peter 5:9: "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings."

The battles I’ve encountered, the anxiety I’ve created, I’ve always found it in myself, even when I didn’t want to, to find my faith that every little thing was going to be alright. Believe me, there were a handful of times where I really had to dig deep to find my faith, but one thing I know to be true is my God has never failed me. I can look at all the negatives and I see where I can be confused on how I’m supposed to have faith when all of these battles have occurred. But I look at the positives, all of the prayers that have been answered, the anxiety that has been casted off of me, the amount of love that my God has for me and ask myself, who am I to doubt faith?

That’s what faith is. To believe even when things don’t make sense, even when your world has crumbled, when your anxiety has taken over your mind, when the worst possible thing has happened. You are asked to have faith in our almighty God because He will not fail you, you have to have faith in that. He will never fail you.

"if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you" (Matthew 17:20).

Never lose that mustard seed.