Anxious Thoughts

“I cried out, ‘I am slipping!’ but your unfailing love, O LORD, supported me. When doubts filled my mind your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer.” Psalm 94: 18-19

This past year my body has been racked with anxiety. It’s not a feeling you can really put into words. It’s such an out of body experience. You tell your body to stop aching and worrying and spinning out of control, but there is nothing you can do about it in the moment. Your heart just races and your mind knows nothing else. Somehow, you have to ground yourself.

One night while laying in bed with my husband, trying to fall to sleep as fast as possible, because I have to wake up so early to go to work, my anxious thoughts started creeping in my head. I tried to push them out. “Breathe,’ I told myself. Keep breathing. Take deeper breaths.” It wasn’t working. One tear after another started slipping down each cheek. I held my deep sobs that would soon be following. I didn’t want my husband to know what was happening. My body stiffened. He reached out and touched me, because he could feel my body start to throb. Then the tear gates fell wide open, my body spun out of control, and my heart felt like it was going to rip my chest wide open rib by rib. I had never felt this much moisture sliding down my cheeks. I had never known what it felt like for the thing that gives you life feel like it was actually about to be taken away. 

I’m not sure how I calmed down and came back to reality exactly on that night. My husband probably started trying to speak Truth to me, because somehow I heard His voice saying, “This is not the life I planned for you, but I am here for You! Turn back. Meditate on my Truths I have told you all of your life. I am your Hope. I am your Stability. I am you Shelter. I bare your burdens. don’t believe the lies and let them seep into the very life of you.”

Oh how I believed those lies. My anxious thoughts were consuming me, which just made it worse, but I never turned to the LORD. I knew I was supposed to, but how could He comfort me? Words in a Book didn’t help. People telling me that God had a plan for me because of my fears and failures didn’t help. And that quote, “if God brings you to it, God will get you through it” definitely didn’t help. I felt alone and misplaced. I felt dirty and ashamed, because “I’m an adult.” I shouldn’t be having problems like this. But I was having problems. 

I still am facing the same problems that gave me my anxiety attacks. Now, I’m actually resting in God’s Word on a daily basis, though. I’m putting forth effort to get to know my Saviour even more so now than ever before.  He has helped me numerous times when I begin to slip. And just when I think I don’t need His help or He can’t do anything is when I realize just how badly I need Him. So many times last year I thought I was crying out for His help and His hope that He promises us, but I was really just asking for an out. I was pretending I had done my duty of a Christian, by “praying” but going back to the filth just after. 

I urge you to earnestly and humbly seek out Christ in your mess. Not just read a Bible verse for the day and say, “Okay, this should help. Why is it not working? He can’t help!” Because that is just filling your head with one more lie than it needs. He promises to help his children.

If you read just four verses up it reads, “The LORD will not reject his people; he will not abandon his special possession.” Psalm 94:14

This is one of my favorite verses. He WON’T abandon you. He will not give up on trying to protect you from the enemy. You are His special possession. That’s not to be taken lightly, so please don’t take Him lightly. He loves you and me and doesn’t want the world to eat us alive.