Anxiety and Blessings
On a very rare occasion I have a little anxiety attack, small and manageable. This evening I suffered what felt like a tsunami of one, nothing I was doing would ease the worry, stress, fast heartbeat, fear, feeling sick to my stomach, and the lack of understanding why this was happening or what was causing it. Normally I am pretty in sync with my body and can usually pretty quickly determine the issue or narrow it down. But tonight, I struggled to know what was going on, but one thing quickly became clear, it had nothing to do with the current situation, but a separate one. One that in looking back on now, in light of concentrating on other things, the busyness of life, our journey I realized to late I had not prepared for and should have.
I am heading on a trip the day after tomorrow and the first stop will be somewhere I spent a great amount of time and part of that stop will be dealing with something that I now find myself to be dreading, to the point of an anxiety attack and wishing more than anything I didn’t have to do. But that’s not always how life works, I have made a commitment and I know that once I fulfill that the anxiety will abate and will once and for all have no more hold over me. Facing things can be hard, especially when we are fully aware of the situation, it is not ideal and in fact know you are walking into the lions den. But tonight instead of being held down by the crushing anxiety, I chose to turn to God and asked Him to hear my prayers and my fears. He reminded me that I am His daughter, and He will be with me every step of the way, and sometimes we have to do hard things, and blessings always come after our trials. I am not doing it for the blessings, I am doing what needs to be done for me; this needs a finish, an ending a completion to be put to rest once and for all. And until I face this, nothing will have changed, so I face fear or I hold that burden forever. So I choose my faith and will face it with His grace covering me. And that will bring freedom, a blessing of its own.
He reminded me to look for the tender mercies He has placed in my day, to be more direct in my prayers to Him and brought peace to me that He is mindful of me and knows me in every way and every moment and will never leave me alone.
Being alone in these moments without your other half that you have come to rely on is painful, but in that pain comes a strength sometimes we forget we have. I can do hard things, and I will continue to do hard things, but I know without a doubt that the blessings coming my way will overshadow any fear that I may feel at this moment. The fear and hardship will pale by comparison and I will one day look back and laugh at how easy that hard thing really was while I was in it, because He carried me and truly made my burdens light.
I looked back over my day and the Tender Mercies were over-abundant, and I missed most of them for what they were. The little things, that early morning text that makes you smile; the dreams from the night before, the beautiful words from the other one, the time taken by the other one to help you research something that didn’t need to be done right away but they did it anyway, for you; being on the same page about random stuff and knowing how rare that is, being able to send sweaty workout pictures without judgment instead being told your beautiful when you feel as far from that as possible in that moment, sharing our likes, and knowing that we can discuss absolutely anything and everything and there is safety in those moments, having that lunch date make you smile and laugh, following all the promptings received and the peace that came with that, continuing to have date questions and discussions, and just being in the moment.
It was a good day, with a twist at the end, but even the twist turned good and brought peace and understanding to a hard situation and more clarity to look for the beauty in each moment, to feel our connection continue to strengthen in all areas of our life and to watch as the road blocks come crashing down.
We will smash them all!!!