Why is it that every time I feel myself being drawn toward God, my anxiety increases?? I went to a pretty amazing concert that had my heart soaring with worship. I left feeling renewed. I hadn't even pulled my car in the driveway afterward when the anxiety began.
"What if I'm too late?"
"What if God's already made up His mind about me?"
"What if he isn't even there?"
Thoughts that have haunted me along with reoccurring dreams and themes of dying. Now, after a good and productive day, when I felt like I conversed with God more than I have in months, I sit in a quiet house and silently begin to unravel. It's hard to describe if you haven't experienced it first hand, but I'll do my best. Try putting a cat into a paper bag and stapling the ends shut. Imagine the commotion that would ensue. The cat knows nothing of failure, or giving in. It will fight that bag with tooth, claw and sheer feline perseverance until either the bag or the cat collapse. That what it feels like inside when I start to get anxious. Like there is something desperate in my chest clawing it's way out. It feels almost like there is someone inside who will stop at nothing to get out--to flee. Most nights the bag wins, but not without serious claw marks left behind.
I'm told that Satan almost always attacks when we begin to turn back to God. When we've been off the path, bruised and broken, and it almost hurts to put one foot in front of the other on the narrow road, the evil one tries his darnedest to convince us that its not worth the fight. With him you don't have to get up. You can just lie there broken. He'll numb your pain with addictions, vanity, or apathy. He'll coddle you and tell you it's everyone else's fault. He'll keep down until you can't remember what it felt like to walk, to see the sun, feel the breeze. He knows that if you get going on God's path, if you walk far enough, God won't numb the pain, He'll heal it. He'll not only help you walk, he'll let you fly (Isaiah 40:29-31). Satan is a serpent. He's a land dweller. He can't catch you if your feet are suspended in the air. Until you look down.
Looking down will almost always bring you down. There is a quote from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park that I just love. "Beware of fainting fits, beware of swoons. Run as often as you like, but do not faint". She is telling the story of a girl who looks down. She turns to the life she'd left and faints. She gives in.
I won't give in. I'll keep walking. I'll opt for healing over numbness, for wholeness over patches, for flight over fainting.
