You know the feeling. You wake up and before your feet hit the floor, the list is already running. Things to check. People to answer. Situations to monitor.
It feels responsible. It even feels righteous sometimes — like if you just stay on top of everything, you can keep the bad thing from happening. Whatever the bad thing is.
But here is what anxiety whispers when you are not paying attention: "You are the one holding this together."
That is the promise. That is the false gospel of control.
What control is really offering you
Control says: if you are vigilant enough, thorough enough, careful enough — you can outrun the thing you fear. It promises safety through mastery. And it is not entirely wrong. Being responsible is good. Planning is good. But anxiety takes a good instinct and turns it into an idol.
The tell is this: you cannot stop. A responsible person plans and then rests. An anxious person plans and then plans the backup plan and then lies awake rehearsing what happens if both plans fail.
Control is not asking for your diligence. It is asking for your worship. It wants to be the first thing you turn to in the morning and the last thing running through your mind at night.
Why it costs so much
The price of control is exhaustion that no amount of sleep can fix. Because the world never stops presenting new threats, and if you are the one responsible for managing all of them, you will never be off duty.
You may also notice that control makes you hard to be around. You become the person who needs to know the plan. You become irritable when things change. You grip the people you love a little too tightly — not because you are cruel, but because you are terrified.
This is the cost: you trade rest for a vigilance that never actually delivers the safety it promises.
The thing anxiety cannot tell you
Anxiety is excellent at naming threats. It is terrible at naming the one who holds all things together. The Christian claim is plain and almost absurdly simple: you are not the one holding this together. Someone else is. And he is not anxious.
This does not mean bad things will not happen. It means that when they do, you are not alone, and you are not in charge of preventing every one of them.
That is either the most foolish thing you have ever heard, or it is the most relieving.