2. stampedes

I will never forget experiencing this overwhelming sense of dread and fear, what I now know can be described as a panic attack, for the first time. A wave of inexplicable apprehension of nothing in particular yet everything imaginable came out of nowhere, scaring me so badly death itself seemed to be knocking down my door.

zero to sixty

inhaling oxygen felt like gasping for breath underwater. My limbs tingled numb as if they’d fallen asleep. My heartbeat thumped in my ears so loudly I swore the neighbors could hear it. And my thoughts raced, yet could not be traced back to a single source. My body no longer seemed like my own, but more so like someone else had the controls and was bent on sending me over the edge.

I was young, with no previous practice talking myself through a situation like that before. All of these intense “what if’s” about me and my family and life massed into a stampede that ran through my mind. At one point I physically

crouched down,

shut my eyes,

and wrapped my arms around my body,

sure the foreign feeling would trample me into the dust. After the last thought galloped away, nothing in my vocabulary seemed sufficient enough to explain what happened. I thought it sounded absolutely crazy, so for years I just never did. It wouldn’t be the last episode of panic like that, and every time I crouched in the same disorientation of it’s ruthless effects.

The repeated motion formed a mold for the natural posture of my being until it became harder and harder to stand back up and shake it off.

The disintegration of peace ran trenches within and became the places I fell into trying to run and hide from the charge threatening to take my feet out from underneath me. The unforgiving rush of anxiety always seemed to come out of nowhere and I labeled it

“the big sad.”

After the first few episodes, spotting when one was on the horizon became easier, but the recognition did little to keep it at bay. The stampedes flared up in seasons and lay dormant in others; the lack of rhyme or reason made them all the more terrifying. However unwarranted or unwanted the panic attacks were, the void or “big sad” in my chest hollowed deeper. Its presence in the back of my mind grew in familiarity and I became an all too welcoming host.

Isaiah 35:4 says

“To those who have an anxious heart, be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come to save you.”

What a promise! Reading this verse now has become a fortress for me because I understand it’s not my strength, which always fails, but God’s, which never fails, that can bring peace to my mind and body. He can handle every single “what if” that crosses my mind, and His response isn’t passive. Jesus Christ, the creator of the heavens and earth, strong enough to hold the universe in the palm of His, and gentle enough to say, “come to me all you who are weary and burdened” (Matthew 11:28-30), fights for me.

It does nothing to hold onto whatever causes me unrest, I have to trust Christ enough to turn it over to His hands. But when I do, the Bible says behold, which literally means look, watch this! God is on the move for us, the image bearers He loves so much. The victory may look different than anything I expect and may come at a different time-frame than I plan on, so I must hold loosely to what the outcome of my fear may look like; but I can hold on firmly to the promises of God’s good and perfect nature like an anchor in the middle of the sea.

He does not delay. God is not orchestrating a fierce ballot of destruction high and mighty in the sky, looking down with a smug grin, arms waving with gumption as He swings this disaster here and that pain there. Christ is jealous, not like an insecure boyfriend, but like a father who fiercely loves His children, for the state of our hearts. He does not want anxiety to lay any claim on me and comes with vengeance at whatever tries to steal me away from abiding, trusting, and loving Him.

But with the first panic attack, came one of the most detrimental misconceptions of who God is. I thought, if He was aware of my walking on earth and this bad thing was happening to me, then He must be powerless or worse yet, unwilling to help me out with anything at all.

My conclusion: God is real but He must not be good and He must not care about me. I started believing that He was constantly ticked off at me, easily angered by me, and disappointed in me.

I have been told that during a fight with someone, it’s best not to use over-generalizations.

You never take out the trash

I always change the babies diapers

We always do what you want to do

You never make time for me

The wide spread effect of an all inclusive accusation reaches to the areas that have not been touched by the single apparent offense at hand, and thus has the tendency to corrupt the entirety. This cause and effect framework became what tied my anxiety to an overarching doubt in God’s capabilities. My accusation said, He can’t stop this so He can’t do anything at all. The fundamental most triumphant aspect of God, that He is able, became nothing more than false hope.

I relied on my own understanding, and my faulty claim flattened routes for future stampedes to romp through. I was 9 years old and already felt like I was on my own, left to my own defenses. The gears of self sufficiency and self dependence began clicking into place. The efficiency of this reliance is like standing on a trap door of a magician’s stage and crossing your fingers hoping in the dark that you won’t fall through.

Even so, backed into a corner I considered it the only ground to walk on….