Ugly things: Anxiety

Today has been a high anxiety day. Not one of those things I like to talk about or even really think about. I'm feeling better now, but then again, I'm sitting on the couch with a frosty mocha and an empty ice cream bowl and every time I think about getting up to do something profitable with my day I feel the anxiety flare up again.

Most of my family struggles with anxiety to one degree or another. Some of us are more honest about it. Some of us are more accepting of it. All of us struggle with the idea that somehow anxiety is sin. After all, if we were really trusting God we wouldn't be struggling with anxiety now would we? So therefore anxiety=lack of faith.
I've struggled with that idea my whole life. I've even propagated it to others. But I don't think it is true. Not always at least. I think that there are some very real and appropriate reasons for anxiety. I think that it can also become a mudhole or a rut that we get stuck in.
For myself some of the reasons that I struggle with anxiety include my personal past history (bad experiences, family upbringing, etc.) and some of it seems to be hereditary. Anxiety is something that at least three generations of my family have struggled with that I know of. Over the years of dealing with my own anxiety which has ranged from full-blown panic attacks (which I construed as spiritual attacks--and no doubt they were, but there was also a very real basis for my anxiety) to just an underlying tension mixed with a little shortness of breath or chest pressure. Some days it has been debilitating. Some days keeping from going into a full-blown panic attack has been debilitating. Many days it has just been more of an unwelcome companion. Thankfully, since I got married to my very loving and supportive husband who is very well grounded in reality I have had much less of a struggle with it. But obviously it still does flare up.

I've come to a somewhat grim acceptance of anxiety as part of my life. I'm thankful that I have never had to take medication for it, but there have been times when that would have been a great relief. Sometimes when I get caught in the whirlpool I feel like a lifeline like that would be helpful. Something to stop the cycle so that I can move beyond that. But it depends too on what caused it. On days like today I am not really sure why I am feeling anxious. I know there are reasons, but it is hard to justify them in my mind. I don't always understand why I feel anxiety about certain things. Some days when I am remember hard things and my mind is just replaying them and replaying them like a broken record I would be grateful for any hand to pull me up out of the mire.
And there are times when I am anxious about things like finances or my husband's safety or my children's future, times when I know that while my anxiety may not be entirely unfounded I do need to put these worries in God's hands and let Him take care of my daily bread and worry about tomorrow's problems.

As for anxiety being sin...I think there can be an element of that too. Perhaps when we refuse to refocus (or try to refocus) our minds on other things than the issues causing us anxiety. But then again, some of that comes back to the issue causing us anxiety. If it is something in our past that we need to deal with, face up to, or work through refocusing might not be the right answer either. My mind trips back to a story about displaced children from WWII. These children were rescued and fed and clothed and given a safe place to sleep, but many of them struggled to sleep and often would hoard food and fight over food even though they were now given enough to fill them. Finally someone came up with the idea of giving each child a crust of bread to sleep with and that solved the problems! The children had been experiencing anxiety over where their next meal would come from because experience had taught them that just because there is food today does not mean that there will be food tomorrow. This is anxiety based in experience. Many of us have experienced this to some degree or another.
And there are many, like myself, who fight anxiety that somehow runs in our family. I don't know if it is a chemical imbalance, a personality issue or some other genetic heritage, but somehow we are all connected by it despite our very varied life experiences.
And then there are some, few in my experience, who rely on anxiety for other reasons like the attention they receive for it or because worrying about something somehow makes them feel more important. But even among these people there is usually a thread of experience or heritage in their lives too.

For myself I think anxiety is like desire: I think it is about what you do with it or don't do with it that counts. God speaks often about the heart in the Bible. The status of the heart is much more important to Him than the outward appearance. So today I had anxiety, but I did not have guilt about it. I prayed about it and asked for help and used some simple strategies to distract myself and today I am overcoming. And I am thankful.

I know that some of you struggle with anxiety too. Don't add to your anxiety by guilting yourself over it. Unfortunately, it is one of those ugly things that come with living in a fallen world. And yes, we do need to guard our hearts an work on overcoming, but sometimes the first steps of overcoming anxiety are admitting that we have it and not being ashamed of that. That way we can move beyond the cycle of anxiety-shame-shame induced anxiety-more anxiety-more shame etc. There is freedom in acceptance.