Anxiety & Freaking Out
You wave goodbye one more time before turning to leave. Your daughter smiles and waves frantically before hopping up the bus steps and skipping to her seat. You feel the familiar clutch in your chest. Your eyes fill with tears. As you watch the bus drive down the street, you fight the almost suffocating urge to break down into a full-on sob right there at the bus stop. You’re sure that’s the last time you will see her. In the span of seconds, you imagine every tragedy possible that could befall her that day: the horrible head-on collision with a tractor trailer that leaves carnage in its wake, the careless driver in the parking lot who sees your daughter running into school a moment too late, the crazed gunman who breaks into the school building…it all plays out in your head with vivid detail. Your rational side tells you that you are being ridiculous, but there’s another part of you that defies all logic and cannot stop the onslaught of anxiety.
As parents, we have all come to understand that having children is the most fulfilling and yet the most daunting task we have ever taken on. With it comes certain stresses that include having our “hearts walking on the outside” of ourselves. I never understood that phrase until I became a mother.
From the moment that child is placed in your arms, you are single-handedly responsible for his well-being. Every need is yours to meet and the urge to protect and nurture is absolute and urgent. I have heard it referred to as the “Mama Bear” instinct. You know in an instant that you would exchange your life for theirs if the situation ever warranted it.
Unfortunately, some of us have fallen prey to taking that a step further. Not only would we exchange our lives for our children if necessary, but we invent scenes in our minds where we manufacture the very thing we fear most: losing our children. Why do we do this? It’s not as if we want that to happen. In fact, we want the exact opposite.
There have been too many times when I’ve watched a scene play out in my head in colors too vivid and details too exact. It’s usually quick, although it feels like a lifetime.
To give you an idea of how this happens to me, one night after I hit “publish” on my first post in this series on anxiety, my 4 year-old son woke up, and I ran upstairs to put him back in bed. The moment I tucked him in and kissed his head, I was bombarded with the awful feeling that tonight could be the last time I kiss him goodnight. My mind started asking, “What if there’s a fire tonight and he doesn’t survive?” I was shaken, but I knew that it was just my anxiety flaring up.
While I am far from “cured,” I have at least made progress. I can now tell myself in the midst of an anxiety attack, where I feel like the sky is falling and a loved one’s death is imminent, that it’s only an episode, and I can’t rely on my feelings at that moment. This isn’t easy and some episodes are harder than others.
Anxiety, for me, is a very dark, foreboding, feeling that rushes over me. I feel like doomsday is just around the corner. If my children are going somewhere with my husband, I find myself thinking, “I’m never going to see them again. I’ll miss them so much. My life will be ruined if anything happens to them. What if this is it? What if today is the day?” And then I start freaking out thinking “What if this is a premonition?”
There's this internal argument. One side of me knows that this is a moment in time that will pass. The other side feels like I have to cling to this very moment for fear that it will be gone...and so will my children.
I used to beat myself up about it. I feared I was crazy. I was able to keep the lid on, but I could always feel it just below the surface, simmering.
One night it dawned on me: Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane hours before He was to be taken, beaten, and crucified. He was visibly disturbed. He was so shaken, in fact, some may even say so anxious, that He sweat blood. Knowing that even Jesus was anxious about something gave me peace.
But here are a couple of differences:
Jesus was anxious about something He knew was going to happen.
I am typically anxious about something that I think is going to happen.
Jesus begged God to take the responsibility from Him.
I beg God to spare my children and keep them safe.
And here's the meat of it...
Jesus said, "Not My will but Yours be done."
I say, "Please don't do that to me, Lord. I'll give you anything you want...just not that."
Once I realized I was doing this--because I think I did it subconsciously--I was able to see that I was offering conditional submission and faith to God. I was raising one hand in the air and shouting "I'm a sold-out believer, Lord! Anything for You! Use me, Lord!" and with the other hand, I was hiding my children behind me, out of view from God.
Here is where things can get tricky. I think it is so important to understand that I don't believe God is a God who arbitrarily "takes" things from us. I do not believe God is a God whose ego is so big that if we don't bow to His authority, He will always and heavy-handedly "see to it" that we do.
“But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” Psalm 86:15.
I am also not going to profess to understand God's ways. "'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,' declares the LORD" (Isaiah 55:8).
God can and He DOES do anything He wants. I may not fully understand all the whys or hows, but He does. HOWEVER, having said all that, I don't believe God to be heartless and cold. I believe He cares deeply about my heart and about my pain.
I've heard it said before that God is a gentleman and He will not force Himself on anyone. He extends an invitation and awaits our acceptance. He pursues those He loves, but allows us the option of choosing. I will get into this more later, but understanding that God is a lover who pursues us and who knows us intimately is critical in understanding how to combat anxiety.
Read and take to heart these verses. Even if you've read them a 100 times before, read them again with fresh eyes:
"It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone." Ephesians 1:11, MSG
"Jesus said, 'Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?" Luke 9:24-25, MSG
"When my heart whispered, 'Seek God,' my whole being replied, 'I'm seeking him!'" (Psalm 27:8, MSG)
"Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray, Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life." (Philippians 4: 6-7, MSG, emphasis mine).
We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of God’s love for us and how it plays into curbing anxiety. I can’t wait to take you further on this journey!
I almost fell out of my seat at church.
God has this amazing little habit of speaking to me in themes and "coincidences" and yesterday, He hit me with a big one.
I had recently written on my friend Ginny's blog about Fear. To recap, in Joshua 1:9, God says, "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go."
Remember, I wrote about how that is not just God telling us to resist fear for our own sake, but also because it's frustrating to God when we doubt Him. Fear interrupts His plan and keeps us from thinking logically and fulfilling what He has for us.
Whether or not we like to admit it, fearing is doubting God. Whether it's doubting His honesty that He will protect us, doubting His ability to protect us, or doubting if He will protect us in the way that we want...it's still doubt. We're wavering.
My pastor drove it home that day in church when he shared with us verses from Isaiah 48:17-18. He said something that stuck with me as he was reading those verses. He said, "You can almost hear God lamenting with His people."
Please read these verses. I am one who often skims over scripture in posts because they are familiar, but these verses are what sent me reeling.
"This is what the Lord says--your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
'I am the LORD your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go. If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your righteousness like the waves of the sea. Your descendants would have been like sand, your children like its numberless grains; their name would never be cut off nor destroyed from before me.'”
Did you see that?
God says in Joshua that He commanded us to not worry.
Then in Isaiah, he reminds us that because we did not follow His command, we have no peace.
This has been, by far, the hardest Truth for me to grasp: my anxiety--my fear--is a direct result of my doubt, my faithlessness (or wavering faith.)
I find myself uttering the same words the man in Mark 9:24 did when he said, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"
I'm there! I'm constantly crying out that prayer to God. I am double-minded and it drives me crazy.
And that day in church and reading Isaiah 48, I realize it drives God crazy, too.
Please don't misunderstand what I am saying. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, proclaiming that all you have to do is "believe" and everything is perfect. I realize there are different levels of anxiety and different triggers. Many people require medical attention. Many require therapy and intervention.
I do believe that God can do anything and heal anyone of any affliction. And while He most certainly can and has used miraculous, supernatural, immediate methods by which to do so, I also believe that sometimes He does that using ordinary, everyday people like doctors and therapists. Maybe to bring about a revival in someone else or to make His strength perfect in someone else's weakness.
Also...I think it could be easy to read this and take away that if you are a "better Christian" you will not have anxiety.
That is not what I am saying and could not be further from the truth.
The Bible is very clear that we cannot do anything to achieve perfection (Romans 3:23), or even come close. If that were the case, Christ would not have had to die on the cross (John 3:16, 2 Corinthians 5:21).
We are flawed human beings and we are all flawed in unique ways, but one way many of us have in common is in being anxious.
I am anxious when I fear for my children's safety. I am anxious because I don't want them to experience pain. And if I'm being truthful here, because I don't want to experience pain.
Most people don't.
But, a very ugly and hard truth is that we are not on this planet to be shielded from pain. We are not guaranteed a painless life. God does promise us in Jeremiah 29:11 that He has plans to prosper us and not to harm us, and He says that to our children as well, but I don't believe that He always means that in earthly terms. Sometimes we will experience things that are allowed in order to fulfill His purpose and/or to refine us or our children.
Here's where I go back to not always understanding God's purpose and I want to fight Him tooth and nail. We are called to take up our cross. Matthew 16:24 shows Jesus telling His disciples "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."
And when I really think about these words, I realize that Jesus said these things knowing what He was going to face. He knew that He was literally going to take up a cross and be beaten, suffer and be humiliated.
And die.
He isn't asking us to take a walk in the park with Him. He's asking us to be willing to go through everything He did.
And then, as I fret and worry about whether or not something is going to happen to my children, and I beg God to spare them, the following verse, also from Matthew, echoes in my mind,
"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it" Matthew 16:25.
Of note? He says whoever wants to save his life will lose it.
He doesn't say whoever wants to lose his life...
We don't have to want to suffer, and we don't have to like it.
But we do have to be willing to follow Jesus at any cost.
And not in our own strength.
God tells us He's got this. He is the One who will get us through.
2 Corinthians 12:9: "But he said to me, "'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."
This isn't going to happen easily and it may not happen overnight.
And the thing is...as I struggle with letting go, I have told myself something that I don't know to be true. I have convinced myself that if I say to God, "Okay, God...whatever it takes! Use me! Not my will but Yours be done!"
That He will take my kids.
While I don't know that to be true, I also don't know it to be not true.
But I do know that God wants me to trust Him--to trust that He has me in His hand even when things are ugly and that someday, even with tragedy, it will be okay, and I'll understand.
And He wants me to stop focusing my energy on something that may never come to be and grieving something that has not happened.
We all have weaknesses, some more difficult than others.
Anxiety happens to be one of mine, and it's a doozy!
But Christ is refining me in this. My feet are being held to the fire and I am being pushed deeper into the Word for understanding and peace.
I pray for all of us that we can continue to put one foot in front of the other and walk next to God as He handles the real heavy stuff, as He tells us to trust Him and to Believe Him--even if it doesn't all make sense and even when it may not be what we would choose.
Father, please wrap Your arms around all of us who suffer with anxiety and worry and fear. You know we aren't perfect, and You know that as flawed people, we fall short so often. But please help us overcome this often debilitating infliction. Please grant us Your peace and please fill our hearts with trust and faith. Please help us to meditate on the verses that tell us how much You love us and that You have our good in mind. Please release us from this fear that keeps us from focusing on whole-heartedly serving You. I pray that You will be with every single person who reads this post, that they will feel Your presence, that they will seek You to calm their anxious thoughts, and that they will lean on You when they feel hopeless, panicked and fearful. In Jesus name, Amen.