I am having a moment of anxiety.
My breathing feels constricted and all I feel is fear. Living with anxiety makes my walk feel like a trudge. Days I wish felt like a walk in the park, feels heavy and emotional….and unnecessary.
Although in my mind I am trying to tell myself to calm down because I am aware that my fears are irrational, there’s this little voice inside that says the threat is real.
One of my triggers is my son. Today I logged onto the camera app to see how he was doing and he wasn’t in his classroom. Anxiety struck and all the fears came rumbling in.
I’ve been here a few times before, but the other times I either called the school or just said a prayer and put my trust in God. Oh, but today….today the anxiety drove me to his school. Literally.
I’m only 5 minutes away so it didn’t take much to convince myself to go up there. When I got there he was in the office and was in trouble for hitting another student. We spoke to him about it and took him back to his classroom. My mommy instincts knew there was something going on. Anxiety took that instinct and lit it on fire.
Kids will be kids, so I am not nearly as concerned with my sons behavior as much as I am concerned with the literal fear that I experienced. I hate it because I don’t want to welcome the things that I fear into our lives. What you focus on becomes reality. Right?
One of the ways that I try to surrender during anxiety attacks is that I practice the art of “responding not reacting”. It’s not always easy to do, but I try. It’s not easy because the fear and the threat feels so real!
I am grateful that although I reacted to the anxiety today, I did not overreact to it. My reaction to the anxiety is that I went to the school. However, I didn’t go in guns blazing or placing blame or accusing anyone of anything. I held my composure and chose to respond to the situation like an emotionally stableadult.
1 Peter 2:23, NIV: “When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”
I try to surrender because its the righteous thing to do and it provides me a peace that I can’t get from anywhere else. When I pray over things that I fear I remember that God is justly and that where and when I lack God gives me grace for.
It’s a daily practice in the most practical ways. Sometimes the trigger can be about my career, other times it can be about a family member or a friend.
This lifestyle, where I take accountability for my existence and get proactive with my mental health, is an ongoing process. No day is the same, no anxious moment is the same. It just is…what it is, and I am trudging through the trenches.
-Kaitlin Alexander