Recently I wrote up a meditation for someone who has been experiencing a lot of anxiety about her future. I thought it might be helpful for others, so I’m sharing it here!

Here is the idea for a meditation practice you could try:

1. Close your eyes and begin to focus on your breathing. Push all the air out of your lungs and see how that makes space for fresh oxygen to rush into your lungs. Notice that you don’t have to try to breathe, and that if you let yourself breathe out fully, your lungs will naturally fill up more fully too.

Life is like that too. Sometimes if we let go of our ideas about what is best, the next thing will rush in that is best for us.

2. Imagine saying to God, “God, I know you love me.” Can you imagine what God’s love would be like if you visualized it? Would it be like a blanket wrapping around you? Would it be like colored light shining on you? (Like a beautiful sunrise happening inside the room where you are sitting?) Would it be like sinking into a warm bath and having the water envelope you? Like drinking a glass of water when you are very thirsty? Would it be like someone looking deep into your eyes and saying, “I see you. You’re good”– “I love you.” ? Would it be like being held by someone that you trust who tells you “I’m right here. I will never abandon you.” ?

Sometimes we have to spend time entering the experience of love and connection, letting it enter us and touch us deeply.

3. Imagine saying to God, “I love you.” Imagine all the places where God is, and imagine noticing God, loving God, in all those places. In the trees, the wind, the heat. In loved ones, or strangers you see walking by. In beauty, in intensity, in imagination. In Silence, in traffic noise. In the darkness of night, in the stars, the warmth of the sun. In healing touch, in exertion, in rest. I’m sure you can think of many places where God might be present. Can you love God in all these places? This is a practice, which changes over time, when we practice it.

Sometimes sending out love helps love to rise up in us, and we are strengthened and healed in the process.

4. Whenever your mind wanders or you notice yourself playing with anxiety like a cat plays with a ball of yarn, drop the yarn and turn your attention to the wide blue sky of your mind and heart. Drop the ball of yarn. Drop the anxious thoughts, and turn your attention to the persistent nature of your breath. Your breath is steady and when you focus on it, it becomes deeper. Let your very breath comfort you in its steadiness. Let your breath connect with whatever images you have of how God’s love touches you. Let that love enter you through your breath, which enters first through your lungs, and then enters your blood and circulates throughout your entire body.

Our thoughts and our emotions rise and fall, emerge, then pass away. Drop anxiety like a ball of yarn and let yourself be nourished by God’s love, who is closer to you than your breath.

5. Close this time of practice with a prayer of gratitude. List off everything you can think of for which you are grateful: Thank you for people who care for me. Thank you for breakfast. Thank you for blue sky. Thank you for a mind that thinks. Thank you for a heart that beats. Thank you for helping me be patient. Thank you for laughter. Thank you for giving me things to want. Thank you for the process of expanding my understanding. Thank you for questions, which lead me somewhere. Thank you for people with more wisdom than I have. Thank you for people with more trust than I have. Thank you for giving me life one step at a time. Thank you . Thank you. Thank you.

Gratitude for what we have expands us and helps us have a sense of abundance and possibility.