Overcoming Anxiety

Overcoming Anxiety

After Tyler passed away, we have battled anxiety a lot.  I did a post on how I overcome fear only three days before Tyler went to heaven not knowing that the fear, I was dealing with at the time was only a small taste of what was to come.  I have accepted the fact that our boys are in heaven, heaven has become so real to me, I look forward to the day that we can all be in heaven together, and honestly studying heaven and having two sons there has completely taken the sting of death away, or has it?  You decide after reading the next two posts.

As I wrote in a previous post, we really dealt with fear the first week or so after Tyler passed away and after I had that dream it was much better for me until February when we went on a Cruise to get away.  We had a balcony sweet and I remember being so afraid to fall asleep.  I made sure that the balcony doors were locked but Angeline and Anneka, (Angeline’s cousin who had come with us) were sleeping between our bed and the balcony doors and I was afraid they might sleep walk and go out and climb over the railing.  Even as I write this it seems like such a foolish fear and its just not like me.  Neither of them ever sleepwalked and I was not a deep sleeper, I would notice anything at night, yet what if this one night one of them would sleepwalk and I would sleep so deep that I wouldn’t notice it.  I had lots of fun during the day and enjoyed the cruise but once night rolled around I so longed to be home where there was no water and we could relax.  I was always able to pray and leave it to God and eventually fall asleep but every time I woke up, I would sit up and make sure I could see both in their beds.

When we finally got home, it didn’t get better.  I would get up at night four or five times a night to check on Angeline.  After a few weeks I decided this had to stop.  Getting up five times a night would not keep her alive and I wasn’t resting the way I should so I decided I would no longer get up at night.  I checked up on her first thing in the morning when I got up but that was it. It got better for a while but a year later we went to Hawaii and again brought one of Angeline’s cousins.  This time I lay awake at night worrying that something might happen to Jerrick (my sister’s son) and I would cause my sister to deal with the horrible pain we had dealt with.  When we went swimming with the dolphins the night before I lay awake worrying about every possible and impossible way something could happen to him and there was no way I could allow it yet I also knew that twice things had happen that I could never allow to happen.  I was just waiting until we’d get back and he would be safe with his mom.  I remember the relief I felt when my sister picked up her son at the airport and I could relax. 

Angeline had a nosebleed one night; I was worried it might have started bleeding again and she would not notice and just bleed out.  Over Christmas and January, an incident came up which caused Jake and I to fall into this dark hole of anxiety, there seemed to be no way out.  This time it got to the point where it really affected me.  When we needed to make decisions like if we were going to go on a trip or even some repairs we needed to make on one of our houses, I felt like we couldn’t do anything until we got out of this hole but there seemed no way out, together with my counselor and Jake’s we were able to make some changes and got out.  But it really made me realize how vulnerable we are yet. 

In her book Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World, Joanna Weaver writes, it works a little like a thick London fog—the kind of fog that is legendary.  Why, it wouldn’t be a Sherlock Holmes story without fog to obscure the villain and allow him to get away.  “Thick as pea soup,” Londoners describe it.  “Can’t see your hand in front of your face,” they say.     However, while physical fog may seem dense and almost solid, scientists tell us that a fog bank a hundred feet deep and covering seven city blocks is composed of less than one glass of water.  Divided into billions of droplets, it hasn’t much substance.  Yet it has the power to bring an entire city to a stand-still.  So, it is with anxiety.  Our mind disperses the problem into billions of fear droplets, obscuring God’s face.  Taking our anxiety to the Lord is often the last thing we think of when we are spiritually fogged in.  And yet only the “Son” has the power to disperse it.  Without him, one fear leads to another, and our lives slow to a painful crawl.

This is how I felt in January, my life became a painful crawl in the dense fog now looking back I see it had hardly any substance. 

When I felt like I was in this fog bank and couldn’t see ahead of me a friend sent me the song Prince of Peace by Hillsong United.  Here are the lyrics:  My heart a storm, clouds raging deep within/ The Prince of peace came bursting though the wind/ The violent sky held its breath/ And in your light I found rest/     Tearing through the night/ Riding on the storm/ Staring down the fight/ My eyes found Yours/ Shining like the sun/ Striding through my fear/  The Prince of peace met me there/     Hope like the sunlight piercing through the dark/ The Prince of peace came and broke into my heart/ The violent cross, the empty grave/ And in Your light I found grace/   Your love surrounds me when my thoughts wage war/ When night screams terror, there Your voice will roar/ Come death or shadow, God I know Your light will meet me there/     When fear comes knocking, there You’ll be my guard/  When day breeds trouble, there You’ll hold my heart/ Come storm or battle, God I know Your peace will meet me there. 

During the hardest day I listened to this song probably five times.  All of a sudden through the fog I found the Lord’s eyes looking at me so full of love and when night screamed such terror his eyes were there looking at me and I realized that even come death one more time God’s light will meet me there.  And the fact is death will come again, we all will die eventually.
Normally though the fog isn’t nearly that dense.  I can see and function normally and I do take my fears to the Lord. I have learned to do that.  When I fear something might happen to Angeline, I ask God to be with Angeline and thank him that he loves Angeline more then I do and will take care of her.  Whatever my fear may be I turn it into a prayer.  Yea I kind of wish God would snap His fingers and just take this anxiety away.  I’m sure He can do that but at the same time if in ten years I have overcome anxiety and no longer deal with it, it won’t matter that there was a time in my life where I had to pray myself through the night.  In fact, I’ll look back and realize it made me stronger. 

I’d be happy if God would just take the anxiety away, but He has not so far done that and it’s a journey we go through.  Step by step God will lead us, after all, our life on earth is our gift to God it doesn’t have to be easy.  Just because we spend more time praying ourselves through the nights doesn’t mean we are to be pitied or that we are broken, it’s okay and when we are fully healed, we will be just as thankful as someone who is healed instantly, even if healing for us only happens in heaven.  I have learned not to make a big deal out of the anxiety I am battling, with God I can have Joy and enjoy life even if I have to limp slightly due to anxiety but I also want to be diligent and do what I can to overcome it.  Levi Lusko said in his book, Through the Eyes of a Lion, after his daughter went to heaven, that he was okay if he had to walk with a limp for the rest of his life but if God would heal his limp he would not fake a limp.  I love that, I won’t make a big deal of the limp I am walking with but I don’t want to keep walking with a limp just out of habit if God heals the limp, I hope that makes sense.

Back to the question I asked in the beginning.  Has the sting of death been taken away?  I truly look forward to the day when my spirit will leave my body and I will be forever surrounded by peace and love and there will be no fear.  I’ve had a few tastes of such incredible love and peace from God that to live in that constantly is very exciting.  I talked to a retired teacher recently who said that she was having tests done.  She worried that her problem would be terminal. She wasn’t ready to go just now.  I don’t want to be insensitive because that is life, death is not a pleasant thought, but I thought ‘why not? you’ve had a great life? what would be more exciting then to be able to enter that peace and love’ (not that I said such and insensitive thing).  The thing I think first when I hear a loved one who serves the Lord has died is, how wonderful it will have been for them to enter that peace and love or when somebody has been healed of cancer I’m wondering if part of them isn’t almost disappointed when they realize they don’t get to go to heaven just yet.  Having said that; I get it though, I’m not ready to go yet either, Roderick and Tyler are doing well in heaven and don’t need me, I don’t believe they miss me because they can watch me run this race and in heaven there is patience but no impatience.  I don’t want my loved ones who are still here to have to go through the earthly pain of being separated from me just yet, they have dealt with enough of that pain for a while.

So then why am I so afraid that something will happen if the sting of death has been taken away.  If one of us would go to heaven it would be amazing to be reunited with the boys, experience the love and peace so I realize I have nothing to fear.  I know that the fear is having to go through that horrible pain here on earth one more time.  It just seems more then I could ever handle but why? God has never left me these two times, I am more convinced of heaven and His great love then ever and whatever is ahead of me with Him by my side I can go through anything but I also realize even though my spirit is alive and well there is a battle in my mind that I have to fight and though the spirit is stronger the mind is also strong and it will take some time.  Even after two years that battle does not seem to subside much but what I have learned is not to pay attention to that voice of anxiety,  some nights it screams so loud but God’s voice roars louder and I know that the night will end just like all the others have and so it doesn’t bother me so much.  Like I said before what makes me think I deserve an easy life, this is my gift to God and I’m telling you when I finish my race and step into eternity it will seem an easy price to pay no matter how hard it is in comparison to the reward I am getting there. 

Relationships

Relationships

One of the pitfalls of grieving is destroying good relationships.  I am not an expert on relationships and don’t have all the answers and I also know it takes two people to have a good relationship.  What I mean is I can desire a good relationship with someone and do all I can to build that relationship but if that person does not desire that relationship it remains just that a one-sided relationship.  As you read this blog it is not meant to condemn you just because you have relationships that are really struggling, it could be that you are the one who keeps running your race while the other person refuses to keep going.  But when we lose a loved one especially a child, we hold on to that relationship with all our might.  We don’t want to give it up. 

When we celebrate the birthdays of our boys, I sometimes struggle with how to celebrate.  Are we going to watch the same video every year and share the same memories?  We change, their friends change, sometimes a lot, but our boys don’t change, no new memories, no life changing experiences, they are who they are and will be who they are for the rest of our life.  The relationship with them doesn’t change, the pain of separation hurts so much that we remember only the good in them and if we remember the things that were annoying or painful even those memories become precious and we would like to tell them that they can be even more annoying and bring us even more pain, we don’t care we just want them to come back but if we get stuck and hold on to them to much our wonderful children, spouses, siblings or any loved ones who are still here will soon begin to feel that they are no longer important because if they cause us pain or do something annoying we now become frustrated quicker. 

As we all know when our children leave us on this earth, we celebrate their life.  Celebrating their life means remembering all the wonderful things about them.  We all come together, parents, siblings, grandparents, extended family, friends, teachers, everyone who has been a part of their precious life and we share stories, many of these stories would be forgotten and never shared if they continued to live but now that they are gone they become very precious to us.  After Roderick passed away, we as a family loved the stories told about Roderick.  It was so precious to see how much so many different people loved Roderick.  Then a year and nine months later Tyler went to heaven and again we celebrated his life and enjoyed the stories we heard but now Angeline was left alone. One day Angeline told me that she needed to be as smart as Tyler.  I told her she did not, why would she have to be as smart, Roderick wasn’t “but Roderick was athletic” she said. 

 She would also make comments like’ why don’t you have family pictures on the wallpaper on your phone? etc.  After the boys went to heaven, we had photos of them everywhere.  With her brothers being so celebrated she was beginning to feel like she had these two heroes for brothers but who was she? Left behind in pain and lonely and unnoticed.  She wasn’t able to express it like that and probably didn’t even know that that is how she felt but slowly I began to see that it was more important really to celebrate the people that were still here, the ones where it makes a difference.  Our boys are safe in heaven and they are happy.  Us crying for them and missing them won’t make them sadder or happier but I do believe that as they watch us from heaven, they are joyful, every time they see us encourage each other or love on each other.  The way I know my sons they would not want us to stay stuck in grief and pain.  It would make them both happy to see us happy and enjoy being around each other and so I have decided that my relationship with my Husband and daughter are a priority.  I love my boys and miss them but there’s nothing I can change in that relationship and they are safe and happy so when times get tough and we go through a deep valley I am willing to focus on these relationships even if it means putting my pain and grief aside for a bit. 

After Tyler passed away, we have dealt with a lot of anxiety.  Would we wake up and find another one of us has passed into eternity?  I often felt like we were so busy just trying to survive that we didn’t have time to really grieve Tyler’s passing.

I remember when I was young a very young widow once said that if she weren’t sad how would her husband in heaven feel if he looked down.  She felt that he would want to see that she missed him.  A lot of grieving people feel that way.  They feel their sadness proves how much they loved their loved one.  It’s true that grief is the price we pay for having loved deeply but at the same time I’m not sure how true that is because sometimes people who have not loved well and missed the chance to love deeply when they loose this person who they should have loved and who they should have treasured grieve even more.  Maybe it’s not grief then maybe its regret, I don’t know.  There too though none of us has loved perfectly so we all deal with some regret as well.  Anyway, I think we all agree that heaven is a happy place, full of love and no sin.  If that is the case and there is no jealousy and no selfishness, how could our loved ones ever feel hurt because we aren’t sad for them.  If they are in such a happy place wouldn’t they want us to be happy too.  They know that we are still on earth and that there is pain here but they also know that we are headed towards their happy place and that when we get there the worst pain we experience here will just be a little bit of muscle pain in this race of life.  As they watch us run this race, they want us to high five each other and encourage each other, because after all we are running towards the finish line where they are so surrounded by love and happiness.  As they cheer us on they love to see us happy and the last thing they want is for us to stop running and just stand and watch them in the stands while our loved ones who are still here with us keep running and leave us behind because we refused to take our eyes off our loved one in the stands long enough to see them running the race with us. 

So lets remember our loved ones who’ve gone on to heaven are watching us run our race (Hebrew 12:11) and although they can’t run with us right now because they have finished their race the last thing they want is to see us giving up on our race, they want us to keep running towards them and they understand that while we are running we don’t have a lot of time to stop and miss them but they are cheering us on anyway and they want all their loved ones to run the race together loving each other and encouraging each other even if in hard times we have to take our eyes off them a bit and focus on getting up this steep hill right now. That doesn’t mean that they will take their eyes off us and stop cheering us on from the stands.  They might just ask God to send an angel to give us a drink so we can make it up the hill.