I referred a friend to my anxiety blog post earlier this month. She was struggling and I was really buying into that whole “God made me this way for a reason” thing at the time. But my anxiety has gotten so much worse this month. And I pray every single day, sometimes multiple times, to God and ask Him to please take it from me. Let me not feel the tightness in my chest, or the rapid breathing and pulse rate. Let me be able to shut my mind off for awhile and sleep. Quit re-running conversations through my head or pre-planning them. To this point though, it hasn’t improved. And I ask why? Obviously there’s a reason for it, but man, am I struggling big time to figure out what that reason is.
One thing I haven’t done as much as I wish I have, is dig deeper into The Gospel. An article on Christianity.com suggests doing just that as a help to quell anxiety:
“For those of us living with anxiety, it feels as though our feelings and thoughts are actively trying to kill us. At the same time, we also know our feelings are lies that cannot and should not ever be trusted. The feeling of dread and panic sends our hearts into our throats and stomachs to the floor. The sense of impending doom is beyond exhausting. But we do have one anchor. While our feelings try to unmoor us, the gospel anchors us. It’s our life line. We know that God chose us before the creation of this world, we also know we live in a fallen world. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt God is with us. He doesn’t want us to suffer and he can heal us. What we don’t know is how he will heal us.”
I guess this week I’ll try to focus on that and see what happens. I’ve realized though, in my search for resources for dealing with anxiety as a Christian, it is way more common than I anticipated. In a way, I’m glad that I’m not alone. It’s awful to someone with anxiety to be told “everything will be fine, stop worrying” like that’s a magic cure. It’s no different when people start throwing scriptures at you in an attempt to be helpful, because when that happens, I feel like I’m a failing Christian. Like my faith just isn’t strong enough or that I don’t believe enough to stop feeling this way. I think that makes things worse, not better. So just remember, no matter how good your intentions are, people may not receive them that way. I found a couple anxiety related devotionals on YouVersion, and I’ll report back with any helpful information I find.
As I’ve said before, I do honestly believe that there’s a reason and purpose for this season I’m going through. I know that Satan makes us doubt ourselves and our faith, but I think there’s also specific qualities and experiences that I am meant to have. I still believe that, even though it’s been so rough lately. I think I can still learn a lot about leaning on God to manage it, but I still do believe that it is going to help me relate to and possibly to disciple to others in my life.
I don’t know if anyone actually reads these posts, but if you do and you are looking for a prayer buddy, comment here.
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