Last week, I talked about prioritizing what God is prioritizing as a way to reduce anxiety. Today I have another anti-anxiety trick: What if we removed “should” from our vocabulary? What if we didn’t think in the “I should be doing…” but instead focused on what we are doing, what God is doing, and what He is doing in and through us? How different would our lives be?
There’s nothing wrong with knowing you need to do something. The difference comes when we know what we need to do, and instead of doing it, that thing becomes a “should.”
For example, I might know that I need to fix dinner – and that I need to fix it now. However, if I keep thinking about how I “should” do it instead of walking into the kitchen and pulling out pots and pans, it’s not just that I’m not doing what’s needed; I’m actively resisting the timing and the purpose of this season of my day.
But back to the question: What if we removed “should” from our vocabulary? It would relieve a lot of stress and anxiety. “I am” is a lot less mental pressure than “I should.” I am cooking dinner, I am reading the Bible, I am loving my family. That doesn’t mean we do it perfectly (the chicken gets overcooked some days), but it’s living with the knowledge of what is instead of the dissatisfaction of what should be.
James, in his epistle, wrote, “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them” (4:17). This can (and has) been blown far, far out of proportion, to the point where it is used as a weapon of guilt rather than an encouragement to give thought to your actions. But it’s also relevant in our “should” discussion. I would not go so far as to say that thinking “should” is sin – far from it – but it can become sin if we are always thinking about the “shoulds” and never doing them.
When a “should” comes to mind (“I should water my flowers,” for example, or, “I should stop talking and go back to work”), I believe the best thing we can do with the “should” is to bring it to God. Is this something for now? If not, it’s not a “should” for this moment. We can think about what God is telling us to do right now, in this moment, instead (which is not to say that we shouldn’t write down the “should” for later – just because we’re supposed to be going to bed now doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make a note for tomorrow to schedule that dentist appointment we’ve been putting off for weeks). If it is something we need to do right now, then we can have peace that we have taken care of the “should” – that we are not in sin by not doing what is necessary – and then we can cross it off our “to do” list instead of stressing over all of the “shoulds” in our lives that we haven’t done yet.
