Unravelling Anxiety: Out of Control

Because these days I need the reminder…

I live in a place the shook violently 4 months ago. And in the shaking, something sifted to the surface that I had not been aware of in my life for a long time. Fear.

There is something about firm ground rolling and sturdy buildings twisting and creaking and clunking that changes your perception of reality. Fear, in this case, is a God-given reaction, a tool for survival, a physical hormonal response to a threat that is healthy and good. In the days and weeks after the earthquake I had physical and emotional reactions to physical stimuli that were practically reflexes – they seemed to bypass the rational processes of the brain and just happen. This is a normal part of how the body works through trauma.

Then fear gave way to anxiety. It was disconcerting to the say the least. Sure, I had been anxious before, we are all familiar with worry, but these sudden bouts of heart-pounding, near hyperventilation were far from my normal experience. Although I knew this was a normal physical response to fear triggers, I hated it, because I felt powerless. I felt out of control.

I think that is what fear and anxiety usually come down to: lack of control. We do a pretty good job, under normal circumstances, of fostering an illusion that we are in control. We actually convince ourselves that we are in control, that we can manage our realities and construct our own futures. So when something threatens this illusion, we feel fearful or anxious. When we realize that the ground can roll like water and that cement can bend and twist, our carefully managed reality is exposed for the facade that it is.

Or when we lose a job.

Or when cancer strikes.

Or when people don’t respond the way we had hoped they would.

The truth: there is always very little within our sphere of control. And that is okay because we were really actually made for dependence anyway. I like how Paul put it when he was speaking in Athens:

God intended that they [humankind] would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. ‘For in Him we live and move and have our being.’ Acts 17:27-28

Living in dependence rather than grasping for control requires some things though. We need to trust that God is in control and we need to trust that God is good, even when circumstances seem to say otherwise. Sometimes believing those things is easy and other times we have to engage every fibre of our faith muscles. When we are living in fear or anxiety we can recognize them and receive them like the flashing red warning lights on a dashboard.  Where am I not trusting that God is in control? Where am I not trusting in His goodness and love toward me? These are opportunities to return and to rest, to have our being in Him.

One morning while I was in the thick of it God gave me a picture that has been His invitation to me ever since.  It’s not going to sound very spiritual if you know the movie, but it was imagery that captured me.  In the movie Signs there is a scene where the family is hiding/trapped in the basement and because of fear the boy is thrown into an asthma attack.  They realize they don’t have his medicine, it is upstairs beyond their reach, so the father takes the son in his lap so that his son’s back is leaning against his chest and he breathes and invites his son to rest into him, to fall into rhythm with his own deliberate and steady breath.  The son’s clenched fists as he fights for every breath eventually relax and let go of the fight he his breathing normalizes. This is what God showed me: me, in the midst of anxiety and fear that I could not control, sitting in his lap and letting His breath and his reassurance wash over me as I relaxed into His embrace and my breathing settled into His pace.

He is patient and loving and he will hold us until we can let go.