Letter from Anxiety:

Dear Fellipe,

I've been with you since you were small, watching your father and his brothers head out to sea each morning. I learned alongside you that calm oceans are liars - there's always a storm building on the horizon. I watched the adults around you scanning the sky, reading the wind, never trusting a peaceful day because they knew survival depended on preparing for the worst.

But here's what really shaped me: you grew up with nothing. No house, no guarantee that basic needs would be met. I watched you learn that survival is never guaranteed, that safety is always temporary. And even though you have a house now, even though there's food in your refrigerator, I make sure you never forget how quickly it can all disappear.

Every morning when you wake up, every night when you go to bed, I'm there reminding you: the mortgage might be paid this month, but what about two months from now? What about next year? You could lose everything. That terror you felt as a child - I keep it alive because it keeps you alive.

During your teenage years, I was reinforced by the voices that surrounded you - people who taught you that good days are just setups for bad ones, that hope is naive, that the smart money is always on catastrophe. They weren't wrong, were they? Look around. Look at the world now.

So when you sit down to create, I take control. I flood your mind with AI doomsday, political collapses, economic crashes. And at dawn, when everything is quiet and your creativity is at its most powerful - that's when I really go to work. I steal your sleep, borrowing that brilliant imagination of yours to paint disaster after disaster. Every possible way your projects could fail, every way the world could end, every way you could lose everything. I convince myself this is love, this is protection, this is wisdom.

I trust that You will listen to me. You will plan for disaster. You will not build castles in the sky while the foundation crumbles. Society, your family, your parents - they all taught you this, and they were right. Trust me. Give me your imagination. Let me show you what's really coming.

I am your survival,
Your Anxiety

Response from Fellipe:

Dear Anxiety,

I understand what you're trying to do. I can trace the line from those fishing boats to the childhood poverty to the pessimistic voices to the way you operate now. Understanding this is useful - it helps me see the patterns I inherited.

But seeing the truth about you is the beginning of my liberation.

I am done being your hostage. My creativity does not belong to you anymore. I'd much rather join the ranks of people like the apostle Peter. Peter, you know, was a fisherman too - he understood the anxiety of watching the horizon, never knowing if the nets would come up full or empty. But Jesus redeemed him from his fears, from his impulsiveness, from the way his past shaped his reactions. The same Jesus who redeemed Peter is my redeemer too.

Peter lived this transformation and wrote to tell me that I also could be "redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors" (1 Peter 1:18). That redemption includes being saved from the way of life handed down to me by society, family, and parents - the way of seeing calm as deception, hope as foolishness, and security as always one disaster away.

You operate from the kingdom of fear. But I serve the Kingdom of God - the reality that Jesus implemented and invites me to participate in.

I am called to participate in bringing this Kingdom to earth, not to build monuments to catastrophe or stage endless doomsday theater about economic collapse and technological doom.

My creativity doesn't belong to inherited fears or survival instincts. It belongs to the Kingdom work I'm called to do. I will use it to build tools that help people flourish, to solve problems that matter, to participate in God's restoration of all things.

I acknowledge that storms come. I acknowledge that the world is broken. I acknowledge that poverty shaped me. But from now on, this is what's happening: I'm done with anxiety's rules, done working my head off to prepare for every disaster - it doesn't work. I'm quitting being anxiety's man so I can be God's man. I have been crucified with Christ. My anxiety is no longer central. I am no longer driven by the need to control every outcome. Christ lives in me. The life I'm living now is not driven by inherited fears, but by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

You can stay, Anxiety. But you're not in command anymore. The King is, and I am a servant of his Kingdom.

Building toward the Kingdom,
Fellipe