In the April 8 New York Times, Mathilde Ross, senior staff psychiatrist at Boston University Health Services, wrote an essay titled, “Anxious Parents Are the Ones Who Need Help.” In the essay, Ross declared that next fall will be a “record-breaking season for anxiety on campus.” Ross continues, “I’m talking about the parents. The kids are mostly fine.”

Ross describes today’s parents as "suffering from anxiety about anxiety, which is much more serious than anxiety. It’s self-fulfilling and not easily soothed by logic or evidence, such as the knowledge that most everyone adjusts to college just fine.”

She recalls earlier years when parents called, anxious about their students, and she would reassure them that situational anxiety is normal and time-limited, parents would be satisfied. End of conversation. Not so today. “Anxiety about anxiety has gotten so bad that some parents actually worry if their student isn’t anxious.” Ross points out.

I think I have situational anxiety down to an art form.

Take Monday’s eclipse. I typically avoid looking directly at the sun, so why was I so anxious about it on Monday? Did I look at it before I put on my eclipse sunglasses? How would I know if that one sideways glance was too much and too long? Well, I’d go blind in three days. Why did my screen look fuzzy on Wednesday morning? Is this the start of eclipse blindness? I wondered as I took off my new glasses with their new-to-me progressive lenses. I refused to read the article on “How to tell if you have eye damage after viewing the eclipse.” And if I store those eclipse glasses properly, I can use them for the next total eclipse; otherwise, I should remove them from the living room sideboard and toss them in the trash. All that anxiousness for 2.5 hours.

I am not alone in my practice of the anxious art. Even in casual conversations, I hear a lot of situational anxiety from people about these dark days in which we live. We’re not easily soothed as much as we are easily stirred to anxiety about, well, everything and anything, and maybe nothing at all.

Dark days and anxiety are not new for those who belong to the kingdom of light. The Apostle Paul, likely an expert on situational anxiety, experienced beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger (see 2 Corinthians 6:5). In Women's Bible Study this week, we talked about those sleepless nights and hunger on board Paul's harrowing voyage to Rome in Acts 27 and 28.

On that wreck of a ship, Paul urged the crew to take heart, they would make it to Rome with no loss of life. Paul’s confidence wasn’t in the crew’s skills since they had abandoned all hope, but in the God to whom he belonged and worshiped. And Paul had plenty of evidence of God's trustworthiness.

Next, he gets practical and tells everyone on board to eat. “And when he said these things, he took bread, and giving thanks to God in the presence of all he broke it and began to eat. Then they all were encouraged and ate food themselves.” (Acts 27:35‒37) You could probably feel the anxiety level decreasing with every bite of food.

I suspect that it was more Paul's thanks to God than the food that eased the anxiety on that ship. Paul knew that thankfulness soothes anxiety. While imprisoned in Rome, he wrote these well-known words to the church at Philippi: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made know to God." (Philippians 4:6)

Often in my anxiety to make my requests known, I rush pass the "with thanksgiving" and then I have anxiety over my anxiety. What I need to do is to remember.

Remember that thankfulness soothes anxiety, especially ordinary acts such as giving thanks and breaking bread. We remember this ordinary act that echoes the extraordinarily ordinary act of the One who after giving thanks for the bread, “broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.” (Matthew 26:26) Take drink, all of you, his blood for the forgiveness of sins. And then Jesus went out to face his darkest hour for us.

So, give thanks, eat, drink, remember and take heart.